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Google Antitrust Suit May Go Forward

Posted by Zonk on Sat Jul 01, 2006 04:40 PM
from the crazy-wacky-suit dept.
Government The Courts Businesses Google The Internet News
TechForensics writes "KinderStart, whose page hits and AdSense revenue dropped sharply after changes by Google demoted its appearance in search results, brought suit claiming the search engine effectively suppressed its first amendment rights by lowering the site's visibility. While the Court rejected that argument out-of-hand, it appeared more amenable to KinderStart's argument that since it was a search page, Google's suppression of a rival search engine is prohibited by antitrust laws. The suit may go forward with the judge's commentary."
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[+] Technology: Google PageRank Suit Dismissed 97 comments
idobi writes to mention a C|Net article covering the dismissal of the Google page ranking case. Despite the loss, KinderStart also saw the ruling as a victory. The judge left the door open for a refiling, and the company is seeking to bring the suit to class-action status. Assistant professor of law at Marquette University Law School Eric Goldman comments in the article: "Frankly, there are very few novel or surprising aspects of this ruling. For example, the judge rejected the claim that Google was a state actor, but this ruling is entirely consistent with the dozen or so precedents involving private Internet companies ... The other rulings seemed very sensible and fairly predictable from the complaint. It's pretty clear that the judge thinks that some of KinderStart's claims have no chance even with repleading, but the judge apparently has decided to give KinderStart that chance rather than just shutting the door."
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  • I think that this whole case is a load of shit. Honestly, I think Google has the fairest ranking system for it's results, compared to MSN or Yahoo! especially. The only reason "KinderStart's" 'ranking' would be decreased, is if less sites linked to it. Well, is their engine really 'all that' if so many less sites linked to them this month, that their Google PageRank value decreased?
    • The suit alleges that Google fiddled with their ranking. While it does seem unlikely that they could be competition for Google when their traffic RELIES on Google, a court might not take kindly to the #1 search engine intentionally neutering another search engine's ranking without damn good reason.

      • Re:I call Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)

        by LiquidCoooled (634315) on Saturday July 01 2006, @05:08PM (#15643702) Homepage Journal
        The site tried to claim before that they were a content site and that google unfairly removed them from the results.
        However it appeared to everyone with eyes that this site was just a crappy linkfarm/google optimising pile of crap with no reasonable content of its own (it did however appear to use a derivative of slashcode for some of its pages).

        Now they are crying that they were a search engine, they are just tosspots crying because google stopped their shit (it was all removed when google refreshed their rules about valid sites and removed thousands of crap from their results).
    • Is this the time to say that monopolies have to follow a different set of rules. It is, after all, a very popular notion on Slashdot.

      Actually, I don't think Google has reached the monopoly level yet, but it will be interesting to see if Slashdotters are consistent about their opinions when the monopoly isn't MS.

      On the hand, just as MS could only qualify as a monopoly when the market in question was artifically restricted to desktop OS's, you could certainly make the case that Google has a monopoly on web se

  • I suppose that the outcome (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ScrewMaster (602015) on Saturday July 01 2006, @04:46PM (#15643631)
    might be dependent upon whether or not Google treated this outfit any differently than the hundreds of millions of other sites out there. If Google changed the rules but applied them to everyone, this is just a case of sour grapes. If Google deliberately shafted what I'm loosely terming "competition" I suppose it would be different, but it sounds like KinderStart just wants to get their rankings back to where they would like them to be and want the court to force Google to do it. I dunno ... like somebody else mentioned the last time this story appeared on Slashdot, if your business model is entirely dependent upon Pagerank then you're putting all your eggs into one very capricious basket.
    • The reason their results dropped might be because they launched with hype and PR and people linked to them. Now that people lost interest, PageRank drops.

      What's funny is that this lawsuit might make their PageRank increase temporarily once again :)

    • Funny thing is, it just doesnt matter. KinderStart has probrably already succeeded at raising their google rank purely by launching this lawsuit.

      Frankly, I had never heard of them before hand and generally dont go to a search engine to search for search engines. As a result of the press this will generate, more people will google "KinderStart" and thus increase both their traffic and google rank.

      Kinda a sad abuse of the legal system, but in the end even if they lose they may win.
      • ...and after people go there and spend five minutes, they'll see exactly what I did. Namely, that Kinderstart is just another generic link site full of SEO craplinks, half of which are either broken or go to squatter sites because the domains have expired. The sad part is that Kinderstart is (at least in theory) aimed at child development and the links that do work generally lead to *really* crappy sites like "Auburn Birth Works® & HypnoBirthing®."

        Yeesh... Google couldn't have shitcanned that

      • Re:I suppose that the outcome (Score:4, Funny)

        by Millenniumman (924859) on Saturday July 01 2006, @09:03PM (#15644249)
        KinderStart should have to pay everything for this suit. They also need have the words "Google's search engine is Google's to do with what they like." branded into their foreheads.

    • Google's Shelf Space = Safeway's Shelf Space (Score:5, Insightful)

      by reporter (666905) on Saturday July 01 2006, @09:19PM (#15644283) Homepage
      In the market for food, Safeway provides shelf space to food producers: Kraft, Coca-Cola, etc. Without shelf space at a major supermarket, a food producer could, theoretically, sell food but would face insurmountable problems in growing sales. If a customer at Safeway did know whether a particular brand of food exists, then there is no way for her to buy the brand. For all practical purposes, the food producer cannot sell its product even though, in theory, the producer is free to sell. "Forbes" provides a good analysis of the shelf-space issue and the anti-trust implications [forbes.com].

      In the market for online products and services, Google provides shelf space by returning links to the sellers (of such products and services) in the Google web page of search results. The analogy between shelf space at Google and shelf space at Safeway is quite strong, and anti-trust laws apply in both cases.

      How does Kinderstart fit into this picture? Well, first, consider the case of shelf space at Safeway. Kroger is a direct competitor of Safeway. Both Safeway and Kroger produce their own in-house-branded versions of many foods. For example, Kroger sells Kroger-branded frozen vegetables, and Safeway also sells Safeway-branded frozen vegetables. Should Safeway be expected to give shelf space to Kroger-branded frozen vegetables? Can Kroger's president claim anti-trust violations if Safeway refuses shelf space to Kroger. The answer is "no". Kroger and Safeway are direct competitors, and Safeway cannot be expected to help a direct competitor.

      As for Kinderstart, it is a direct competitor of Google. Google is a general search engine that handles all searches in the known universe. Kinderstart deals with only a subset (of that universe): search results dealing with only parenting. Since Google and Kinderstart are direct competitors, we cannot expect Google to help a direct competitor. Google's management is well within its right to even remove Kinderstart from all of Google's search results (i.e. Google's shelf space).

      By the way, Google now owns more than 60% of the market for search queries, and Google's marketshare is growing. Google has now entered monopoly territory, and we must keep a watchful eye over Google. Google is fully capable of evil (like catering to Beijing in censoring search results). However, in this particular case involving Kinderstart, Google has not done any evil -- yet.

  • Meh, not improtant (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Henry V .009 (518000) on Saturday July 01 2006, @04:48PM (#15643637) Journal
    I wouldn't be worried -- it won't go very far. Too many people like Google, and that actually matters. Less importantly, it's a silly lawsuit.

    At the same time, I wouldn't consider Google stock a good bet. They make all their real money through advertising, of which some significant fraction is fraud. They are desperately groping around for some other way to make money, but none has shown up yet, despite their having snapped up every bright mind in the tech industry for the last couple years. Google knows as well as anybody that as soon as they start trying to make money by charging for all their free services, there will be an instant public relations backlash. There is nothing that the public hates more than having to pay for something that used to be free. When Google starts cashing in on everything they've built, they a) still won't make more money from it than from search, which is probably tapped out, and b) they will become more hated than AOL.
    • google being liked has nothing to do with whether or not a judge rules against them.
    • I wouldn't be worried -- it won't go very far. Too many people like Google, and that actually matters.

      This isn't American Idol.

      You'd be surprised how few people outside of the hothouse environment of Slashdot have a substantial emotional investment in Google.

      Not that it matters much, really: Judges are appointed for life to insulate them from popular pressure.

    • Too many people like Google

      Too many people where? On Slashdot? Get around a bit more and you'll find Google holds no special place in the hearts and minds of those the slashdot elite would derisively term "Joe Sixpacks." And -- Gosh, I hope this is not a NewsFlash -- it's Joe and his friends, not the Digerati (and underage Digerati wannabes) who actually make things "go," including the justice system.

      Of course, by the time that they "become more hated than AOL," they will have amassed a database of all

  • did google do this? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by joe 155 (937621) on Saturday July 01 2006, @04:48PM (#15643640) Journal
    Was this a deliberate act or can they just not accept that they have less importance in the eyes of the google web crawler/indexer. I believe google uses a "vote" system where every link counts as a vote... as far as I am aware no human is directly involved with this so unless google was being malicious the case should have no grounds.

  • well... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by awing0 (545366)
    I'm sure if you set up a hamburger stand in Burger King's parking lot they would surely have you removed. They are trying to build their business of a search engine on the back of Google's. No one forces Google down your throat, it just happens to be the #1 search engine. Google's ranking is its "parking lot", a property of Google. Every scumbag website loves to cry when Google delists their deserving ass. Even if you didn't deserve it, it is their search ranking. KinderStart should focus on Yahoo or MSN an
    • I'm sure if you set up a hamburger stand in Burger King's parking lot they would surely have you removed.
      Apples and oranges. Setting up a hamburger stand in BK's parking lot is tresspassing on BK's private property. That is no different than your neighbor across the street holding a garage sale on your drive way.

  • Kinderstart (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bongo Bill (853669) on Saturday July 01 2006, @04:56PM (#15643658) Homepage
    What is KinderStart anyway? I searched for it [google.com], and it seems that there are plenty of results completely unrelated to the plaintiff. Why wouldn't KinderStart be suing them? I find it rather implausible that Google would suppress a search engine that does not pose a real threat, given that the results for the similar pages [google.com] link on a search for "Google" prominently displays so many of their strongest competitors.

    And never mind that Google, being a private enterprise, can present its results any way it wants (assuming that the claims are accurate), so that there's no grounds for a lawsuit. This whole incident smells frivolous.

    • One thing should get this thrown out of court. Tada [google.com]. Google UK is fourth, after frickin Altavista of all places, and real Google is fifth. Then MSN Search and Yahoo.

      If Google were going to, nonsensically, manipulate the search rankings for itself, surely it would not have actual competitors, not little guys that no one has heard off, on its first result page. (In fact, putting little guys up there would be the best bet. Put up the crappiest engines no one's ever heard of when people people look for altern

    • Re:Kinderstart (Score:4, Informative)

      by BrynM (217883) * on Saturday July 01 2006, @05:15PM (#15643724) Homepage Journal
      What is KinderStart anyway? I searched for it, and it seems that there are plenty of results completely unrelated to the plaintiff.
      The real proof in the pudding is how other engines handle it. MSN [msn.com], Yahoo [yahoo.com] and even Webcrawler [webcrawler.com] (who has horrid URLS now) list it as the top result. They may be gaming results (since when do kids need NASDAQ [kinderstart.com]?). Despite their cheery presentation, they are a for-profit company as far as I can tell. Google may have cought them doing something fishy. From what their press release page [kinderstart.com] has, they have an activity gap of four years or so, so the pageRank theories people have proposed might have weight as well. I guess we'll find out eventually.

    • And never mind that Google, being a private enterprise, can present its results any way it wants (assuming that the claims are accurate), so that there's no grounds for a lawsuit. This whole incident smells frivolous.

      This is only mostly true. If google is using their market dominance of the search engine market in an attempt to surpress the rise of any other search engine, then they are doing something wrong. And if they actually have over 80% of the search engine market, it is likely even illegal. Us

      • Re:Kinderstart (Score:5, Interesting)

        by DavidTC (10147) <sldfgh.vadiv.vad ... m ['erb' in gap]> on Saturday July 01 2006, @06:54PM (#15643929) Homepage

        Except that Kinderstart and Google are not in the same market. Kinderstart is, despite them trying to confuse the issue, a directory, not a search engine. What's more, they are a very focused directory. There is no way in hell they can even vaguely compete with Google.

        And here's a fun link. Search Google for 'kids'. What's the topmost result? Yahoo!'s Web Guide for kids.

        Oh, yeah, Google's really trying to corner that market. They not only don't even have a directory for children, but point people looking for one of those at a very big competitor to their actual business, general search.

        That's like, the exact opposite of abusing your monopoly position. Someone comes into a hamburger place (google) and wants some ice cream (Kid friendly stuff), and you don't have any, you direct them to a directly competing hamburger place (yahoo) that has ice cream (Their kid directory), instead of just an ice cream place (kinderstart), in the hopes they'll come back to you for the hamburgers.

    • I don't know what Kinderstart is but when I see links like this one [genuinescientology.com] (a site for the Scientology) from Kinderstart's own web site [kinderstart.com], I know something's weird's happening...

  • Antitrust, antischmust (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dachannien (617929) on Saturday July 01 2006, @05:00PM (#15643670)
    While the Court rejected that argument out-of-hand, it appeared more amenable to KinderStart's argument that since it was a search page, Google's suppression of a rival search engine is prohibited by antitrust laws.

    What's next, forcing Wendy's and Burger King to put McDonald's advertising placards in their restaurants?

  • Any web developer knows that ranking algorithms are fickle. Sometimes sites come out ranked well, sometimes not. Work on improving your content, and use word of mouth or advertising or whatever to get your name out there. This lawsuit is just going to waste everybody's time and money (except the lawyers', of course).

  • Supression? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bogtha (906264) on Saturday July 01 2006, @05:17PM (#15643725)

    If Google suppressed other search engines, they might have a point. But Google aren't suppressing other search engines, they simply aren't choosing to promote this particular one. The website still exists.

    To use an analogy that people might be more familiar with, this isn't like when Netscape complained Microsoft included Internet Explorer with Windows, this would be like if Netscape demanded that Microsoft included Netscape Navigator with Windows.

    And the whole idea that Google are doing this purposefully to kill other search engines is ludicrous, given that Google list plenty of real competitors when you search for "search engine". But somehow this tiny search engine nobody has heard of is worse competition than MSN, etc?

    They actually claim that their First Amendment rights are being infringed. For those of you completely unfamiliar with the USA constitution, as their attorney apparently is, the First Amendment says:

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

    Last time I checked, Google not including KinderStart in their index is substantially different from Congress making a law.

    Remember: freedom of speech is not the freedom to force your speech on others.

    KinderStart are either kooks or publicity-whoring barratry artists, the SCO of search engines.

    • If dropping in rankings constitutes "suppresion" that is subject to antitrust restrictions under the theory that for a search business, the very act of placing other search engines in the rankings is inseparable from the business implications of such placement, then we have a very problematic logical extreme:

      The first twenty pages of results at every search engines must be full merely of links to other search engines, since to drop them in the rankings is anticompetitive business practice. It would render s
    • given that Google list plenty of real competitors when you search for "search engine". But somehow this tiny search engine nobody has heard of is worse competition than MSN, etc?
      It really wasn't that long ago that Google was a nobody. I know nothing about this company, but if they have good technology, they may pose a threat to Google.

  • Hopelessly Lost (Score:5, Funny)

    by wbren (682133) on Saturday July 01 2006, @05:32PM (#15643763) Homepage
    Google's suppression of a rival search engine is prohibited by antitrust laws.
    If you really need to use a search engine to find another search engine, I don't think you'll ever find what you're looking for.

  • This is totally stupid. First, Google is not required to list any website, especially not those of competitors. That would be like suing the yellow pages company for not including a (free!) listing for a competitor's directory. (At least in MA, there are multiple companies selling directories. The phone companies distribute them for free, and then another company, Yellow Book, has started giving them out.) Second, this isn't free speech. Google is free to quash any company it feels like. The Webmaste

  • Since google is not a monopoly, why on earth would they be required to actively promote (search engines are promoting sites with results and the higher the ranking the stronger the promotion) the competition?

    I wouldn't see any problem with google removing this site from their database and giving them NO ranking.

  • Web directory (Score:5, Insightful)

    by truthsearch (249536) on Saturday July 01 2006, @05:58PM (#15643813) Homepage Journal
    It looks like KinderStart's primary content is a web directory. That's all that Google would spider. Web directories generally rank very poorly on Google. Google's indexing is written to take into account that when a person is searching for something they generally don't want to be sent to a directory. People want to go directly to the info they're really searching for. And if other highly ranked sights are taking about KinderStart then they'll rank higher in Google's search results for the name. So I don't see this as Google doing anything wrong.

  • Bout time! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ShyGuy91284 (701108) on Saturday July 01 2006, @06:10PM (#15643841)
    I'm sick of typing in "yahoo" and "MSN" and not seeing the search portals. It's such a terrible anti-competition practice. *tries it* Oh, wait. They are the first results. In that case, Google must consider this niche search engine to be a bigger threat then MSN and Yahoo!. Who would have thought? And on a side note, KinderStart now comes up as #4 in an article pertaining to the lawsuit.
  • Does NBC have to advertise CBS programs or risk an antitrust lawsuit?
  • I did a search for "kids chat" in Kinderstart, and did not find my Kids chat listings. Google shows my site at #14 on the results for "kids chat".

    I don't have a problem with Google, but...anyone know a good lawyer? I have this new girlfriend who is teaching me the meaning of "high maintenance", and I figure Kinderstart may be good for a few bucks.
  • day.

    Nothing but soccer going on today.
  • .... When has it been Google's responsbility to line Kinder's profit margins?

    Whats next? Have me sue you because you are not making me money? Is google even costing them money at all? They had free advertising for awhile from a competitor of all places!

    So by chance Kinder just happened to be highly rated in Google(a competitor I may add), and all of the sudden they are not advertised as much when tweaking some algorithm. Kinder cries boo hoo! Why should Google go out of their way to help a competitor?

    What p

    • Re:Uh. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DavidTC (10147) <sldfgh.vadiv.vad ... m ['erb' in gap]> on Saturday July 01 2006, @05:06PM (#15643693) Homepage
      What sort of search engine relies on someone searching for it on Google? Am I missing something? Do people go to google, search for 'search engine', find one, and use that to search?
      • No but it use to be that when you searched for alot of well defined topics with alot of words in your search that the first couple pages in google would just direct you to other search engines.
        Theses pages would have ads or direct you to sites for purchasing the item. In addition theses search engines would purchase alot of generic domainnames that redirected you to the exact same page.
        In a way they were not really that good of search engines since if you did enter anything to search they just had a few
      • You would be surprised, actually. I've seen some people who are unused to computers who do actually access sites exactly that way. They might, for instance, go to their browser's default search engine and search for Google.
        • Exactly. A lot of my users never change their IE start page from MSN, then the very first thing that they do after launching IE is to do an MSN search for Google. Some of them even have an IE favorite for Google, and therefore have a start page with absolutely zero value for them at all. When I point out to them that they could just change their start page to Google, they complain that "that's too hard". These are people with college degrees. I'm over forty now, and some of these people have been usin
      • Do people go to google, search for 'search engine', find one, and use that to search?
        maybe not 'search engine', but people look for specialized search engines all the time.

        Google does a lot, but it doesn't do everything. Business to business stuff especially, not to mention that a large portion of the internet is in the form of databases that Google barely spiders.

    • Re:Uh. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by TenLow (812875)
      ..and if you search for "search engine" the top 3 are dogpile, altavista, and metasearch. google.co.uk is fourth.
    • Irrelevance does not equal suppression of first amendment rights. If it did, then I would have been gagged years ago.
    • "Hello Paypal this is google. Can you please put a link to our payment system?"

      "What? No. Fuck off".

      "But, we have a link to yours!"

      "Huh? Ok. Fuck off".

      "Maybe we'll take out all references to Paypal if you won't reciprocate"

      "We'll sue. Fuck off".

      "So, that's a no?"

      Once you let judges have a say in how and what Google has in it's index you open a real can of worms and how hard would it be for some very good attorney and some very bad judge to decide that indeed the nature of the web is cooperation and reciproc

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