As one lawsuit ends, Google finds another one cropping up in the wake of its victory over the Department of Justice; plenty of opinions have followed the news of the new litigation.
In recent weeks, Google has settled a click fraud lawsuit and escaped from the DoJ’s clutches in the legal arena.
Now Google has yet another invitation to return to U.S. District Court in San Jose, which has become a virtual second home for members of Google’s counsel. A directory of kid-oriented resources, KinderStart.com, saw its PageRank in Google plummet to zero around March 2005.
KinderStart wants monetary damages and information on how Google’s PageRank technology works. A Google spokesperson said, “we believe the lawsuit is without merit and we will defend against it vigorously.”
Several blogs that follow the search and tech industry weighed in with opinions on the suit. Gaping Void’s Hugh MacLeod suggested some people may have the wrong idea about Google and search rankings:
So people have a constitutional right to Googlejuice? So Googlejuice = Free Speech? That to me seems an insult to the notion of Liberty.
RepriseMedia’s Search Views echoed MacLeod’s statement:
Just because Google’s ranking system (is) inscrutable and they’re sometimes difficult to deal with doesn’t mean a site has a Constitutional right to an excellent search rank. At least, we don’t think it does…we’ll see what the courts have to say.
The Kelsey Group’s Greg Sterling posited that a decision for the plaintiff could be disastrous:
Think about the precedent: It would be the end of organic search – every other site would litigate when its ranking fell.
Our publisher made one point about KinderStart.com that hasn’t been addressed yet:
Interestingly, the KinderStart.com website features Google Adwords.
Those Google ads are still running on the site. We are attempting to find out more from Gregory Yu, who is representing KinderStart.com. He did not return requests for comment from murdok by press time.
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David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
