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The Courts Government News Your Rights Online

Searchking Loses Suit Against Google 195

Posted by michael from the master-of-your-own-domain dept.
An anonymous reader submits this story that Searchking has lost its suit against Google for lowering search rankings. Silly lawsuit, good riddance. See our original story.
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Searchking Loses Suit Against Google More

Searchking Loses Suit Against Google

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  • Talk about conflict of interest... (Score:5, Funny)

    by cruppel ( 603595 ) * on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:12PM (#6088030) Homepage

    Search for "search engine" [google.com] at Google...hmmm maybe they should sue themselves?

  • If Google purposely changed pageranks... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fobbman ( 131816 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:13PM (#6088034) Homepage
    ...do you think that this [google.com] would happen?

  • Finally.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:14PM (#6088037)
    A lawsuit that ended in a positive way. Sheesh, why can't that happen more often? :)
    • They Do. Its just not news then is it? In fact, you may be surprised how many of this silly lawsuits that get covered by the media, then thrown out of court, never get covered after the initial coverege.

  • Manipulation of stats (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Trollificus ( 253741 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:17PM (#6088052) Journal
    From the CEO of Search King:

    "SearchKing never broke a law, yet was accused, judged and executed without so much as a notice of intent. This affected thousands of innocent people without just cause."

    There's no dispute that they didn't break any laws. But if I recall, didn't Search King manipulate the Google page rank system to artificially inflate their own rank? Google must have a ToS clause for that sort of thing.

    • Re:Manipulation of stats (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mondoterrifico ( 317567 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:20PM (#6088066) Journal
      They are a private company. Google can do whatever they want to the rankings. If they wanted to rank everyone in reverse order starting tommorow they could. SearchKing was just some jackass company trying to get publicity and it worked.

    • Re:Manipulation of facts (Score:4, Funny)

      by http ( 589131 ) on Sunday June 01, 2003 @02:14AM (#6088484) Homepage Journal
      i'm baffled by what they said
      accused, judged and executed
      so.. it would seem they consider Google's opinions to have the force of law, and that appearing lower on Google's system (as opposed to simply being removed) equates to corporate execution.
      wish i could have got drugs that good back in the day.

  • awful layout (Score:5, Funny)

    by shmuc ( 70684 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:17PM (#6088056) Journal
    searchking should sue their web designer first... before i do ahhh my eyes! the goggles, they do nothing!

  • cry about it ya baby... you don't own google. (Score:5, Funny)

    by r0xah ( 625882 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:18PM (#6088058)
    *sniffle* *sniffle* mr. judge... google won't pick me first even after i paid other people to act like i am a good choice... can you punish them and help me get picked first again!!! *sniffle* *sniffle* -searchking

  • The trial was fixed... (Score:5, Funny)

    by angst7 ( 62954 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:18PM (#6088061) Homepage
    The jury was intimidated by the pigeon mafia [google.com].

    ---
    Jedimom.com [jedimom.com], choo choo choosing you!

  • Search King... (Score:4, Funny)

    by cageyjames ( 642932 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:18PM (#6088063)
    Somehow this just reminds be of The Simpsons and Mr Plow vs Plow King...

  • look at me, i'm suing google!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DarkSkiesAhead ( 562955 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:23PM (#6088074)

    from the article:
    SearchKing CEO Bob Massa expressed disappointment over the ruling, but he didn't see it as a complete loss.
    Of course it's not a complete loss. SearchKing has received more attention with this lawsuit than they ever would have on their own business merits. That's part of why suing a big player like google or IBM is so lucrative even when your case is so flimsy. Attention whores.

  • The [Search]King is dead! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ride-My-Rocket ( 96935 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:25PM (#6088078) Homepage
    Long live the King [of Searching]!

  • Have you noticed? (Score:5, Informative)

    by danila ( 69889 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:27PM (#6088086) Homepage
    While the lawsuit was dismissed by the court, Google had to restore (voluntarily) the Searchking rankings. That means those damn search engine spammers can continue their evil doings. :( Google tried to adapt its system to abuse, but failed. Unfortunately, it seems that the more important Google becomes, the less freedom they will have to arbitrarily change (fine-tune) the system. Users lose as usual. :(

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) * on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:32PM (#6088101)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Have you noticed? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kzinti ( 9651 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:48PM (#6088144) Homepage Journal
      Google had to restore (voluntarily) the Searchking rankings.

      Had to? Voluntarily? Those two are contradictory.

      Google probably restored the SearchKing rankings as a temporary measure until the matter was settled. Now that it's been established that Google is within their First Amendment rights to rank sites any way they choose, they should return to the version of PageRank that rightfully discredits rankings manipulated by the likes of SearchKing.
    • I figured they set things up so that 'searchking' would turn up if you did an actual search for 'searchking', since lots of people were intrested in seeing their site after news of the lawsuit came out.

  • For our next trick... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Znonymous Coward ( 615009 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:28PM (#6088089) Journal
    Silly lawsuit, good riddance.

    Frivols, SCO is next.

    GNS/Linux is not SCO!

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) * on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:36PM (#6088108)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Question (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Iron Monkey543 ( 676232 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:40PM (#6088122)
    Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange on Tuesday denied a motion for a preliminary injunction

    I assume that both parties did not incur any legal fees since there was no actual trial right (is that what an injunction is)? if they did incur legal fees, is SearchKing obligated to pay for Google? I sure do hope so!

    • Re:Question (Score:4, Informative)

      by odin53 ( 207172 ) on Sunday June 01, 2003 @02:00AM (#6088450)
      Of course both sides incurred legal fees. Rarely do lawyers do contingency work; plaintiff-side lawyers who work on class actions or are suing corporations in products liability cases are really the only ones who might work on contingency.

      It doesn't matter if there was no trial. The motions involved are pre-trial motions -- Google motioned to dismiss, and SearchKing asked for a preliminary injunction. Judge Miles-LaGrange granted the motion to dismiss, and (obviously) denied the motion for a PI. A PI is a temporary order by the court to prevent the defendant from doing whatever it is that the plaintiff is suing about because it will cause immediate hardship (it's more complicated than that, but essentially that's the point).

      SearchKing isn't obligated to pay Google. The are a very few, specific circumstances in which a loser in an American court must pay the winner, and this situation isn't one of them. The other possibility would have been pursuant to a settlement agreement, but that's negotiated and thus different in every case.
    • I assume that both parties did not incur any legal fees since there was no actual trial right (is that what an injunction is)? if they did incur legal fees, is SearchKing obligated to pay for Google? I sure do hope so!

      heh...heeh...hahahahahaha. You obviously have not encountered the American Legal system...Google undoubtably paid a fair amount in legal fees for this matter. Lawyers want money to prepare briefs and file motions in court, whether or not it actually goes to trial. As for recouping them,

  • Ha! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NotAnotherReboot ( 262125 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @11:49PM (#6088148)
    Make sure you check out the response from the CEO of SearchKing (and probably the only employee):
    http://gooogle.searchking.com

    Juicy tidbits:
    "Of course we are dissappointed with the judge's decision to dismiss the preliminary injunction, but it was not unexpected. We knew this was a case of a highly technical nature and that educating the court with only the short filings allowed would be very difficult."

    "It was about the abuse of power. SearchKing never broke a law, yet was accused, judged and executed without so much as a notice of intent. This affected thousands of innocent people without just cause."

    And then, the letter, the whole thing is so good that you just HAVE to read it in its entirety.
  • From the letter

    "
    You have made several public statements that you hand review complaints before you assign a manual penalty. If you have someone on the payroll already whose job it is to evaluate specific sites and apply specific penalties, then stop wiping someone out and then making them beg you for forgivness. Instead, if you identify a problem, send an email to the webmaster alerting them to your findings and intentions and give the webmaster a minimum of 30 days to either correct the problem or contact

    • If Google discovers there's an error in their system, why should they be under any obligation to delay correcting it? And if someone's abusing their system, why should they be under any obligation to tell the abuser and allow the abuse to continue uncorrected?

    • Re:Actualy, Mr. Searchkign has 1 good point.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jeremy Erwin ( 2054 ) on Sunday June 01, 2003 @01:29AM (#6088397) Journal
      Google is valuable to its customers because it is both capacious (3 billion web pages) and it seems to do a decent job ranking search results. The first advantage stems from the fact that Google relies on automated cataloguing agents (spiders). The second advantage is that certain algorithms try to heureustically gauge relevence (otherwise mirrors of /usr/dict/words would crop up far more often.

      It is all but impossible to assemble a 3 billion entry database of webpages without automation, and it is even more difficult to edit it down. If, on a spot check, it is noticed that the actual relevence of results differs greatly from Google's relevence, it is not appropriate to hand edit the scores. Rather, new algorithms must be devised that recalibrate the "relevancy" of thousands or millions of pages, so any miscalibration will be, in the eyes of Google's users, shortlived. Hand editing isn't fast enough.

      But you want to add lawyers to the mix. What a nifty idea. I suppose you have a plan involving the use of "selling pagerank" so as to offset the massive increase in legal fees paid by Google...

      Meanwhile, the world will move onto another search engine.
      • otherwise mirrors of /usr/dict/words would crop up far more often.

        One of my lectureres sets an assignment every year where students have to sort a dictionary of words, provided in a random order. He used to post the file in plain text for download, but now posts it in an archive. The reason for this is that a few years back he got a visit from Interpol, who had searched for a particular string ('illegal drugs for sale' or something), and found that his random ordering contained it. He had a hard job tr

        • The reason for this is that a few years back he got a visit from Interpol, who had searched for a particular string ('illegal drugs for sale' or something), and found that his random ordering contained it. He had a hard job trying to explain that it wasn't a concealed message...

          Why is it up to him to explain that?
  • Of course, Google is not the company Searchking should be going after.

    Obviously, it's Mr. Search who poses the greatest danger.

    "Call Mr. Search, that's the name... that name, again, is Mr. Search!"

  • Offtopic... (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by kmac06 ( 608921 )
    This is somewhat offtopic...but when you do a google search for slashdot [google.com], there is an ad on the side for google software designers...guess they like the /. crowd :)
  • The fallacy?

    Assigning a monetary value to pagerank.

    SearchKing believes they can set a price on the value of a pagerank and sell it to consumers (by using appropriate technology investment to increase the pagerank value). However, 1) Google has not granted resale right to this entity, and more importantly 2) it is too volatile to monetize. It's like trying to predict the % change at close of penny stocks.

    Google is under no obligation to stabilize this "good", which then helps SearchKing capitalize on it.

    It may seem (at first) that one could assign a monetary value to pagerank because (at least for popular sites) pagerank is relatively stable with respect to other sites of similar popularity. But the reason why a site achieves page rank is because of popularity.

    By attempting to inflate a site's pagerank through a monetary transaction (thus using artificial methods), you are essentially trying to buy popularity with money. Unfortunately, paying SearchKing won't make other people like your site more, so that transaction won't work (unless SearchKing can make everyone visit the site in question, and then like it).

    I think SearchKing and its employees' grasp on reality is a little bit deficient.
    • By attempting to inflate a site's pagerank through a monetary transaction (thus using artificial methods), you are essentially trying to buy popularity with money.

      As much as I don't like SearchKind's tacky PR methods, they do raise an important point.

      What is wrong with advertising links from websites? And why is it different when Google does it via google adwords?

      Yes, people are paying for pagerank and manipulating the system. But advertising is an integral part of how things work. If you disagree

      • Re:Crux of the whole SearchKing confusion... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Sunday June 01, 2003 @02:13AM (#6088479) Homepage

        Because the whole point of Google's search results is that they're not affected by advertising. That's why they're useful to Google's users. Yes, Google does ads. Notice that they're clearly and completely seperate from the search results. And what better ranking than "most relevant to query" would you suggest?

        • Google is under no obligation to make pagerank have any qualities other than what it deems to be important to google's users.

          Consider this: if google takes tecnhological measures against SearchKing specifically, then google has invested its own resources into purposefully debasing SearchKing results. The only reason it would do that is because Google believes SearchKing is skewing the value of pagerank away from google's intent, thus making the metric less useful to Google users. In other words, the sites
    • "so that transaction won't work (unless SearchKing can make everyone visit the site in question, and then like it)."

      Kind'a like slashdot replacing 1 in 100 "reformat the comments page" pages with an automatic redirect to an advert?

  • Maybe google will catch these A-holes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by westyvw ( 653833 ) on Sunday June 01, 2003 @01:04AM (#6088342)
    This site:

    http://www.traffic-power.com

    will get caught, and their sites moved down.

    They manipulate content in web sites to link to thier own servers which then link back to the site, artificially increasing their rank.

    check this "secret" page for sites, go to one and look at the source.

    http://www.traffic-power.com/r

    Bastards

  • Bozos like SearchKing should have been countersued (Score:3, Interesting)

    by klui ( 457783 ) on Sunday June 01, 2003 @01:35AM (#6088407)
    Does it bother anyone else that these guys can come up with self-serving stupid lawsuits? I think Google should have countersued those guys for the hassle they caused. Resources and money that could have been used to improve Google basically went to a law firm for Google's defense. It sickens me what these guys did, much like what SCO is currently doing.

  • Clueless, a Complete Asshole, or Both? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RoninM ( 105723 ) on Sunday June 01, 2003 @03:48AM (#6088782) Journal
    From the article (and the letter published by SearchKing [searchking.com]):

    SearchKing never broke a law, yet was accused, judged and executed without so much as a notice of intent. This affected thousands of innocent people without just cause.

    Hello? He filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that it committed improprieties. He called Google a monopoly and said that its actions were intended to squash competition. He's wrongfully accused Google of breaking a variety of laws and then has the audicity to claim that he's the victim?

    A wake-up call: SearchKing was never accused of anything. Bob Massa publically stated that SearchKing was selling links in an attempt to boost his customers' PageRanks; a practice explicitly forbidden by Google (as described here [google.com]):

    However, certain actions such as cloaking, writing text that can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in permanent removal from our index. If you think your site may fall into this category, you might try 'cleaning up' the page and sending a re-inclusion request to help@google.com. We do not make any guarantees about if or when we will re-include your site.

    This is obviously Google's prerogative and, moreover, what's best for Google's users (and the Internet) as a whole. So while SearchKing CEO Bob Massa is whining about Google attempting "to restrict the legal business of another without due process" and the "thousands of innocent people" that have suffered because of this decision, the truth of it is that he's the one trying to restrict the legal business of another and reduce the usability of Google, thereby negatively affecting the vast majority of Internet users.

    That cements the asshole part. The cluelessness is even easier to prove. The lawsuit obviously never had a leg to stand on and everyone knew it. And while some might attribute it to a shrewd marketing move by Massa, it's garnered only niche coverage and a lot of negative publicity; the inevitable loss has effectively ended his business of attempting to sell PageRank and cost him legal fees besides. He releases a settlement offer, too, which means he either expects us to believe that this suit was ever about a noble endeavor to better the Internet or he honestly believed that there exists some legal standard by which he might've won the case. Yet more evidence: his settlement offer demands that Google put sites who have broken Google's terms of service on notice -- but Google's policy concerning people trying to artificially inflate PageRank is both obvious and public. His whole settlement offer would be laughable if it weren't so tragically stupid.

    My vote, then, is that Bob Massa is both clueless and a complete asshole. This ought to be a poll, really.

  • Good news for DNSbls (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Charles Dodgeson ( 248492 ) <jeffrey@goldmark.org> on Sunday June 01, 2003 @03:58AM (#6088817) Homepage Journal
    I see a parallel between this and suits (or threats of suits) against DNS based blocking lists, such as the Spamhaus SBL [spamhaus.org] or SPEWS [spews.org]. Those are lists of opinions. No one is forced to use those lists. But some people find them reliable enough with useful listing criteria to actually block connections based on those listings.

    So, I am pleased by this ruling not only for what it means for google, but for what it may mean for DNSbls.

  • searchking are a-holes, but (Score:3, Insightful)

    by eyalrozenman ( 584436 ) on Sunday June 01, 2003 @04:38AM (#6088931)
    It is obvious google justly won the lawsuit, but the question remains whether it is proper that one search engine should accumulate so much power. Suppose one day google is sold to Microsoft. Will you then start using another search engine? I currently don't know of another engine which even gets near google's quality. What should we do then? Wait until the patent on PageRank expires? Or perhaps we should put our faith on the google owners never to do such a thing?
    • If Microsoft take over Google and start abusing its power, then they'll inevitably destroy the very reason we use it. They'd MSNalise it, put crappy and intrusive ads all over the place, and start taking money to rig search results. Its usage would collapse in a nanosecond...
    • What would you suggest we do now then?

      Google isn't forcing the market, except by excellence. Excellence draws in users. Not advertising, nor adware, nor any of a lot of bad means.

      If Google goes bad, we'll use better means. So far, though, Google isn't bad, nor has it moved in such a direction (IMHO).

    • Is it proper? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mindstrm ( 20013 )
      If it's not proper, feel free to start your own search engine, eh?

      Google didn't abuse monopoly power to get where they are; they have not in any way coerced or threatened any other search engine, they simply made a search system that was innovative, unique, and desirable to people. They didn't rest their success on marketing, or anything else but pure technological innovation.

      Now, I don't think google can do no wrong, they are a company, they have a bottom line... but so far, the reason they are on top is

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