Searchking Loses Suit Against Google 195
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
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The Tao is like a glob pattern: used but never used up. It is like the extern void: filled with infinite possibilities.
Talk about conflict of interest... (Score:5, Funny)
Search for "search engine" [google.com] at Google...hmmm maybe they should sue themselves?
Re:Talk about conflict of interest... (Score:5, Insightful)
-Restil
Re:Talk about conflict of interest... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Talk about conflict of interest... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Talk about conflict of interest... (Score:5, Funny)
A better search would be to search for sites, using the search term: "search". (I'm pretty sure I said that right)
Interestingly enough, they are #2.
Well, I suppose it makes sense. Who goes to google to find google? I imagine not too many click-throughs on that one...
Mandatory Simpsons Quote (Score:2)
Operator! Give me the number for 911!
Re:Talk about conflict of interest... (Score:2)
This is actually the "ultimate search engine test" proposed by Thompson et all. You select each search engine in the test as a state, start out randomly in one state and jump to the next state by searching for "search engine" (or a similar string).
When the time spent in a state -> infinity, you have found the one you're looking for. Mind you, this test doesn't take into consideration that results may be fixed (which they probably are).
Re:Talk about conflict of interest... (Score:4, Funny)
The Homepage of God [netstore.de] ranks fifth. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's not that bad either, considering some people spend all their lives looking for God.
Re:Talk about conflict of interest... (Score:2)
Oh yeah? So what search engine do you use that's better than Google?
Face it, computers don't have common sense. People do. But who is going to employ a billion librarians to rank search results? We have to make do with what generic relevance algorithms are invented thus far, which unfortunately will probably fall short of common sense for a long time.
Webmasters refuse very often to links with low pagerank although it would add value to their site.
I think t
Re:Talk about conflict of interest... (Score:2)
Re:Talk about conflict of interest... (Score:4, Insightful)
If Google purposely changed pageranks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If Google purposely changed pageranks... (Score:2)
...you read fark too. sorry, i beat ya by one minute [slashdot.org]
Re:If Google purposely changed pageranks... (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmm... I need to find something on the web. Bummer. I don't know how.
Wait! I remember hearing about a site called a "search engine". It knows how to find anything I need.
Gee... If I only knew how I could find a search engine. I'm kind of stuck here...
I know! I'll Google for it!
Here we go... http//www.google.com ... "search engine" ... OK.
Ahhh... Alta Vista. Sounds like just what I need.
I just love the Internet; information is always one click away!
Re:If Google purposely changed pageranks... (Score:2)
Observe that this page [google.com] isn't the first hit for either of those searches.
Re:If Google purposely changed pageranks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Other good searches:
real browser [google.com]
nerds [google.com]
Thanks to the Stanford-Berkeley rivalry (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If Google purposely changed pageranks... (Score:4, Interesting)
news: 20
for: 12
nerds: 1
stuff: 2
that: 2
matters: 1
Finally.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Finally.. (Score:2)
Manipulation of stats (Score:5, Interesting)
"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)
Re:Manipulation of stats (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm... Altavista did so regularly before Google came along. Google has raised the bar by an order of magnitude - but it's still a matter of subjectivity, as the judge rightly ruled. One man's useless search result is another man's goldmine.
Re:Manipulation of stats (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think this argument holds water.
You watch television to be entertained. You are seeing their opinion of what is entertaining. You "pay" for it by watching ads. They can put on anything they think is entertaining. if you don't like it, then don't tune in.
Google is providing their opinion as to what are good search results. Just their opinion. There is no obligation for those results to conform to anyone else's opinion. They could have any opinion they wanted as to search results. If you don't like that they turn the results completely upside down, then go somewhere else. Even by running ads, Google has no obligation to you whatsoever. Just because Google's site is run by a publicly traded company doesn't change this fact.
TV in fact has some regulations as to what can and must be shown (i.e. certian amount of news, public service ads, etc. required) because the airwaves is a limited resource.
Since the Internet is an unlimited resource, there are in fact NO FCC restrictions as to what Google or anyone else can put on their own website. Unlike with the limited airwaves, anyone can build an internet search engine in their basement. If it has really good technology or is favored for other reasons, you grow it like a business. All you need to build a search engine is the resources, either minimal, or funded by investors. Of course, the investors could come later if you have a fresh new search technology concept.
Re:Manipulation of stats (Score:4, Insightful)
I did carefully point out the difference between TV and Internet. TV is a limited resource. Internet is not. Thus no FCC regulation of content. Nonetheless, there are analogies, such as the advertising supported business model, which I used as an anology, while carefully observing the differences.
Google has absolutely no obligation to provide what you or I think is good content. No responsibility. None.
If people stop visiting their site. Their ad revenue is eventually indirectly affected. They do have a responsibility to their shareholders. But none to their website visitors.
Are you seriously arguing that a website, even one owned by a public corporation, has a responsibility to it's visitors?
Do the following sites have some kind of responsibility in the content they provide...
Slashdot better start providing a fair and accurate view of Microsoft. After all, Slashdot is (1) owned by a public corporation, (2) supported by ads and subscriptions.
(Of course, I would suppose that perhaps Slashdot does provide an fair and accurate view of Microsoft
Re:Manipulation of stats (Score:4, Informative)
This whole thread is still getting one key point of fact wrong: Google is not a publicly traded company.
Here: go look them up [yahoo.com]. Type in "Google." Nothing, right?
The people that run Google could get spectacularly rich if they were to issue an IPO. Some have theorized that any IPO from Google would fuel a new tech boom, and some have the audacity to claim that it's Google's responsibility to do this and single-handedly save the stock market.
But they don't want that. They realize that they run their company in slightly untraditional ways-- they don't hold profit as the top priority at the expense of all else (which is why you don't see larger ads, or any willingness to sell rankings on their search engine), and they like that they can make decisions based on right-and-wrong gut reactions. Their tech guy, Sergei Brin, has a nice outlook on what they value, which you can find in this slightly older Forbes article [forbes.com], and he's never yet changed his tune.
Therefore, they have even less responsibility to anybody than even you might think. They don't have to justify their actions to stockholders, and they're not under the legal guidelines the SEC would impose if they were a publicly-traded company.
They can do what they want, and are content (for now) to do so.
Re:Manipulation of stats (Score:2)
That's a good point. But it does not invalidate my argument. I could have listed many other websites. In fact, the whole internet.
And yes, as far as I can tell slashdot does implement editorial responsibility - if I submit as a story a link to goatse.cx and claim that there's proof that it's Bill Gates from behind I'm quite sure the editors wouldn't post it
But there are probably other sites that would post it as news. (At least, let's suppose th
Re:Manipulation of facts (Score:4, Funny)
wish i could have got drugs that good back in the day.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not even reminiscant of a valid argument.
The CEO of Google could, perfectly within his rights, "hit the switch" right now . That's it; no more Google. Format the drives, massive eBay auction of the servers, and store the software safely in a vault for all eternity. By the logic above, that would "break" all of these businesses who, for whatever inexplicable reason are relying solely on Google's free services for their page hits. (Did I emphasize that enough? Free? Free. FREE !). Nobody has any right to be included in Google's database, likewise nobody has the right to demand that any site be removed from Google's database.
There's a concept in business known as "advertising". It is something that must be accounted for in a business plan, budgetted for annually, forecasted for the future and carefully considered at all times. Simply submitting your URL to an online form and hoping you get a good PageRank is NOT how a business advertises; it's how homepages and Blogs advertise.
awful layout (Score:5, Funny)
Re:awful layout (Score:2)
Re:awful layout (Score:5, Funny)
cry about it ya baby... you don't own google. (Score:5, Funny)
The trial was fixed... (Score:5, Funny)
---
Jedimom.com [jedimom.com], choo choo choosing you!
Search King... (Score:4, Funny)
look at me, i'm suing google!! (Score:5, Insightful)
from the article: 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.
Re:look at me, i'm suing google!! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:look at me, i'm suing google!! (Score:2)
Re:look at me, i'm suing google!! (Score:2)
May be he should put a patent on it? (Score:2)
The [Search]King is dead! (Score:4, Funny)
Have you noticed? (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Have you noticed? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Have you noticed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Presumably because Google has the right to a free press, and thus retains (a modicum of) control over what it prints. No need to expand your search criteria to the entire bill of rights, though the ninth and tenth amendments could come in handy.
Re:Have you noticed? (Score:2)
More importantly; where in the Bill of Rights is SearchKing guaranteed a prominant Google rank?
hrm (Score:2)
For our next trick... (Score:5, Funny)
Frivols, SCO is next.
GNS/Linux is not SCO!
Re:For our next trick... (Score:2)
Re:For our next trick... (Score:2)
Hey! There is lots ov us!
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Question (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
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.
Re:Question (Score:2)
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,
Re:Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the opposing verdicts in the criminal and civil OJ trials are a good thing.
In criminal cases, one must be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. This reduces the number of wrongfully convicted.
In civil cases, where penalties can typically only come in the form of fines and injunctions, the burden of proof is reduced, and the side with the most convincing case wins.
So, from these, rather than drawing the conclusion that there's some kind of conflict of logic, one can simply see that
Ha! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Funny)
Repeat after me: There are no American Tanks in Baghdad [welovethei...nister.com]
Re:Ha! (Score:2, Funny)
We're invading Iraq to get rid of dangerous WMDs" [http]
Re:Ha! (Score:2)
They have two employees, him and his live-in, uh, well you be the judge.
Actualy, Mr. Searchkign has 1 good point.. (Score:2)
"
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
Re:Actualy, Mr. Searchkign has 1 good point.. (Score:2)
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:2)
Re:Actualy, Mr. Searchkign has 1 good point.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Actualy, Mr. Searchkign has 1 good point.. (Score:2)
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
so what? (Score:2)
Why is it up to him to explain that?
Searchking's real nemesis (Score:2, Funny)
Obviously, it's Mr. Search who poses the greatest danger.
"Call Mr. Search, that's the name... that name, again, is Mr. Search!"
Re:Searchking's real nemesis (Score:2)
Offtopic... (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Offtopic... (Score:2, Funny)
Crux of the whole SearchKing confusion... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Crux of the whole SearchKing confusion... (Score:2, Insightful)
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)
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?
Yes, this is true, but more importantly... (Score:2)
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
Re:Crux of the whole SearchKing confusion... (Score:2)
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)
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
Re:Maybe google will catch these A-holes (Score:2)
Not very well [google.com], apparently. :-)
Re:Maybe google will catch these A-holes (Score:2)
Re:Maybe google will catch these A-holes (Score:4, Interesting)
Ahem.
Bozos like SearchKing should have been countersued (Score:3, Interesting)
Clueless, a Complete Asshole, or Both? (Score:5, Insightful)
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]):
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.
I vote both (Score:2)
Re:Clueless, a Complete Asshole, or Both? (Score:2)
Good news for DNSbls (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
Re:searchking are a-holes, but (Score:2)
Re:searchking are a-holes, but (Score:2)
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)
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
What's to accept? (Score:3, Insightful)
ANYONE is free to purchase technology from them, start their own search engine to compete with it, or WHATEVER. "Control of such a vital tool?"
They control THEIR tool, and absolutely NOTHING they do prevents anyone from doing anything else. They are not an illegal monopoly and don't do anything that would seem to violate antitrust issues, legally or morally.
Remember, a monopoly is not a bad thing or an illegal thing, it's when a monopoly abuses it's
Re:Lesson (Score:5, Informative)
The judge dismissed the case because Google's system "constitutes opinions protected by the First Amendment."
SearchKing wanted to be "restored to its previous PageRank and to be awarded $75,000 in damages."
Re:Lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like a crybaby screaming because his parents realized he found a way to the cookie jar and finally locked the cupboard door... and it's quite sad that complains like these are allowed to made it to court and waste justice time...
Good thing they lost anyway. Sorry SearchKing, go find another business model
Re:Lesson (Score:2)
~S
Re:Lesson (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, that's not true. If you read the actual judgement here [searchking.com], you'll find that the strongest argument centered around patents, in the following vein:
(1) Google claimed its rankings were opinion and thus protected by the First Amendment.
(2) Search King claimed that they couldn't be opinions precisely because Google holds a patent on the process used to make them.
(3) The judge found Search King's argument "not wholly without merit" (p. 6), but that Google could still alter the result of that patented process in a subjective manner and thus it was protected as free speech.
The critical argument by Search King (p. 5):
Re:Lesson (Score:4, Informative)
Here. [searchking.com]
Re:Lesson (Score:2)
Re:Lesson (Score:2)
A brief reading of the patent would indicate that it covers the initial, less mature page rank algorithm that google started with (and is highly vulnerable to link farming). It's number 6,285,999 if you're interested.
Some one robbed the plunder house!!!! js (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, not being able to manipulate the results hurts Search King. Google's changing the results helped those who weren't in the SEO business. Thank goodness a judge tossed out the case. Let's hope more suits get thrown out in the future.
Re:Declined? (Score:3, Insightful)
How to be a good businessman: Shut up.
Or, "What I don't say can't be used against me".
Re:heh (Score:2)
Short answer, yes. It gets more complicated than this poor old brain can grasp, but goes something like this. The village outcast is allowed to be rude and obnoxious. The village mayor and most of its citizenry are not. The rules are complex and fluid, but along with the trust of the public goes an obligation to honor that trust. Google has come a long way since its beginnings, and is now s
Re:heh (Score:2)
Since they are nowhere near a monopoly on search engines on the Internet, they're responsible to no one for anything. As I said in an earlier post, they could shut down abruptly and cause the same ripples in the WWW.
If all the other major (1 billion plus indexed pages) engines were defeated by Google, I'll concede that then, and only then do they
Re:heh (Score:2)