Google Sued over Page Ranking 596
OrangeHairMan writes "Google.com is being sued by SearchKing.com because Google "purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites, causing his business to suffer financially." There's a page on SearchKing.com's site too." Does anyone besides me find this hilarious? My favorite part is that the name of the site is "Search King".
Too Easy (Score:5, Interesting)
cheap plublicity stunt (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Too Easy (Score:5, Interesting)
- Robert Massa:There is nothing wrong with wanting link popularity for your site and I'm saying there is nothing wrong with sending out email to people you don't know from Adam and trying to conduct business without the benefit of money, but there is also nothing wrong with paying for the value you perceive with cash. I call it doing business.
I call it SPAM!!!!!!- Robert Massa: Maybe I really am the Internet anti-Christ for saying this, but here goes.
I am a salesman. I sell things for a living. I get hired by my clients to sell things. That's what I do, I'm good at it and I make no apologies for it. If a cynical SEO uses the term "eke out cash" as a synonym for "make a sale," then yes, I am guilty.
You are the anti-christ. Case Closed.Re:Too Easy (Score:5, Funny)
Too bad!
Re:Too Easy (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Too Easy (Score:5, Interesting)
As a matter of interest, are Google under any legal obligation to provide an "fair" search?
By the way, the link in my original post gave searchking.de top billing as I am searching from Switzerland.
Re:Too Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
SearchKing doesn't have a point anyway, unless there's a contract between the two obligating Google to do something to benefit Searchking (in exchange for Searchking benefitting Google in return). If SearchKing doesn't have a contract, Google doesn't have an obligation, therefore SearchKing doesn't have a basis to file a suit (and the suit should get tossed relatively quickly).
Re:Too Easy (Score:5, Informative)
"As a matter of interest, are Google under any legal obligation to provide an 'fair' search?"
Probably not. As a matter of fact, according to Google's own Terms of Service [google.com]:
"You may not use the Google Search Services to sell a product or service, or to increase traffic to your Web site for commercial reasons, such as advertising sales."
Re:The banned site is Searchking.com (Score:5, Insightful)
What nonsense. They have no power at all to ban your site. You have an absolute right to put whatever you like on your website, and they have an absolute right (within the limits of the law, of course) to put whatever they want on theirs. If you don't like how Google works, use another search engine.
Why not try searchking.com, for example? Bwahahahahahah.
Re:Too Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
The second link on the google search for searchking says it all "PageRank For Sale -- Exclusive interview with SearchKing / PR Ad
/ PR Ad Network's Robert Massa.
Description: SearchKing has started selling text ads on its network of independent portals, with prices based on..."
Geez. If I really wanted to just go to the site that paid the most in advertising I'd stick with watching TV so I could just get my info from commercials. We all know how honest and accurate THAT system is.
Re:Too Easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that, but google has fricken ads down the side of the page. If I want to see who's willing to pay for my eyeballs, I'll look over there (and, indeed, I do sometimes, depends on what I'm searching for). That's where people pay to show up. The search results are not for that.
People paying to get bumped up in the page ranking are idiots. You want to go up in the page rankings, get more people to honestly link to you. You want to pay for more hits, buy an ad.
Re:Too Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the fact that both the terms 'search' and 'king' are pretty common, it's not suprising that lots of sites come up. Since almost nobody has heard of SearchKing, most people are likely looking for something else (why the hell would ANYONE be looking for some fourth-string search engine if they already know about Google?). The higher number of clicks on the other sites will naturally raise their ranking above SearchKing, no evil plot on Google's part is needed.
If there is some sneaky stuff going on here, I think it'd have to be coming from SearchKing - anyone wanna bet that after the normal slashdotting dies down SearchKing has been clicked on enough to raise it's Google ranking?
Re:Not at all. (Score:5, Insightful)
What this is about is someone taking advantage of the google system and google doing an error correction. Google is of use because it works as a ranking engine, and these people are intentionally trying to throw off the rankings.
This isn't trying to stomp on people, it is manually tweeking an algorythm. And it is a GOOD thing.
they just have... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:they just have... (Score:5, Interesting)
Google's PageRanking algorythm (Score:5, Insightful)
They expect google to never change it? In return for what? Do they have ANY business relationship with google, other than the obviously parasitic one?!?
FOAD..
Re:Google's PageRanking algorythm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google's PageRanking algorythm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Google's PageRanking algorythm (Score:5, Funny)
No, I don't, which is the reason their power must be destroyed.
Not so hillarious (Score:4, Insightful)
PlowKing? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:PlowKing? (Score:4, Informative)
Signed,
Simpsons Nerd
The Internet King (Score:4, Interesting)
Comic Book Guy: Oh, Captain Janeway. Lace: The Final Brassiere. Oh hurry up, I'm a busy man. Ugh, this high-speed modem is intolerably slow. [The download is interrupted by a banner ad for the "Internet King", with a little picture of Homer wearing a crown.] Hey, what the? Huh, the Internet King. I wonder if he can provide faster nudity.
[Scene changes to Homer's office]
Homer: Welcome to the internet my friend, how can I help you?
Comic Book Guy: I'm interested in upgrading my 28.8 kilobaud Internet connection to a 1.5 megabit fiber-optic T-1 line. Will you be able to provide an IP router that's compatible with my token ring Ethernet LAN configuration?
Homer: [long pause] Can I have some money now?
So you see, Homer ran a very typical Internet company. The only thing notable about it was the very untypical way it ended (for a dot-com, that is), with Bill Gates showing up in person to trash Homer's office. But you have to give the Simpson's writers credit. This was written in 1998 and back then nobody knew that an Internet company needs to turn a profit to survive.
Re:PlowKing? (Score:3, Funny)
"Call Mr. Search,
that's my name.
That name again
is Mr. Search!"
In a related Simpsons reference (Score:4, Funny)
Google : Mr. Simpson?
Search King: You don't look so rich...
Google: Don't let the haircut fool you, I am exceedingly wealthy.
Search King: [quietly to the lawyer] Get a load of the bowl-job!
Google: Your Internet ad was brought to my attention, but I can't figure out what, if anything, Search King does, so rather than risk competing with you, I've decided simply to buy you out.
Search King and their Lawyer quietly discuss this proposal.
Search King: I reluctantly accept your proposal!
Google: Well everyone always does. Buy 'em out, boys!
[Googles' lackeys trash the room.]
Search King: Hey, what the hell's going on!
Google: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks! [insane laughter]
Re:PlowKing? (Score:5, Funny)
There's a man you should be callin'
That's KL5-4796,
Let it ring!
Mr. Google is a loser,
And I think he is a boozer,
So you better make that call to the Search King!
In Spanish too!
Senor Google no es macho,
Es solamente un borracho
Re:PlowKing? (Score:3, Interesting)
How stupid do you have to be? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, wait, this is the same company that sold placement on a site they didnt have any rights to..I think I just answered my question
Re:How stupid do you have to be? (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't that what the DOJ did to Microsoft?
Trolls aside, Search King is claiming that Google used their dominant market position (in web searches) to shut down a competitor (Search King) in a different market (advertising).
Their actual case is absurdly weak, but it isn't nearly as crazy as some people are suggesting.
Re:How stupid do you have to be? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you are saying that the thrust of their claim is antitrust. I think this is correct (NOT their claim itself; merely the divination of what their claim is) and they are attempting to argue that Google is an "essential facility." They can't claim breach of contract since they don't have one (although I'm sure Google is going to argue, if it comes to that, that SearchKing is in breach of the toolbar TOS). They do not appear to be claiming tortious interference. Their argument appears to boil down to "something happened at Google that changed our Page Rank and that's unfair so make them stop." This is sort of an "essential facility" argument. But to have even a small chance of prevailing it must first be established that Google is a monopoly. I think this is going to get tossed on a 12(b)(6) motion.
Time for a name change (Score:4, Funny)
Since they already seem to be in the financial doldrums, it is a good time for them to change their name. I suggest: Suc King.
Unbiased reporting.. (Score:5, Funny)
SearchKing, Oklahoma's premiere parasitic link-farm
vs
SearchKing is one of the pioneers in developing portal and search engine software and services
Guess which report has which statement? :)
Re:Unbiased reporting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gads, I went through this on K5 on a regular basis - I got sick of the meta-discussion about 'bias' and stopped visiting. Suddenly /.'s policy of only reporting news and not accepting stories about Slashdot itself look nice.
--
Evan "flashbacks with sound suck even more..."
Why on earth... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why on earth... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) MS is a monopoly, so no, it can't do whatever the hell it wants with its own OS. Google is not a monopoly, so it can.
2) MS has a history of strong-arming companies who use alternative OSs. Google hasn't, as I recall, blocked the site of any PC company that by default shipped with their browsers linked to AltaVista. And even if they did, it wouldn't matter, because Google isn't a monopoly and Microsoft is! Once you commit certain crimes (using monopoly position to hurt your competitors) you lose certain rights.
3) Google isn't a platform. It takes very little effort to switch to another search engine. Same thing with Ford cars or Charmin toilet paper. Not only does it take a non-trivial amount of effort, but Microsoft actively uses it's monopoly power to make it difficult for users to switch, by locking people into proprietory file formats and closing services off to people using alternative OSs.
PageRank.c (Score:5, Funny)
if(q[i]="Searchking") {
q[i].rank = q.bottom - 1
}
Re:PageRank.c (Score:5, Funny)
On line 2 of post 4495094: Possible unwanted assignment.
Re:PageRank.c (Score:4, Funny)
Oh well, bad jokes deserve bad code I guess.
Re:PageRank.c (Score:5, Funny)
A *REAL* <blah blah blah> would have noticed that the original article mentions that the SearchKing press release is ranked 2 out of 10. Yes, 2 is "one up from the bottom".
Just like an egotistical ivory-tower half-blind code monkey to start pointing out bugs without reading the spec.
Quote from their page (Score:3, Funny)
and page rank goes up (Score:4, Insightful)
SearchKing will then be able to say, "ha we complained and google fixed it!"
Re:and page rank goes up (Score:3, Interesting)
As it should, but I think (hope) that Google is more sophisticated than that. It will go up for queries like "google law suit", not for anything SearchKing cares about.
Re:and page rank goes up (Score:3, Insightful)
"In August 2002, PR Ad Network began placing text ads for businesses on web sites with a high PageRank from Google, thereby becoming one of very few competitors to Google's advertising service."
Right. That's like saying an autobody shop competes with Ford and then has the right to sue when Ford switches from sheet metal to plastic or that a used Ford dealer is a competitor to Ford that can sue Ford if they starts discounting new cars or discontinuing models. What an idiot.
A better analogy (Score:4, Interesting)
An even better analogy to the description he uses in his own press release is that of a car thief that specializes in stealing and stripping Hondas announcing that he's one of Honda's few competitors, and that he has the right to sue Honda if they improve their alarms and anti-theft devices.
Re:and page rank goes up (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:and page rank goes up (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure SearchKing will get its "more evil than satan" 15 minutes of fame over this. Because I feel they are evil, whoring search trolls. (can they sue me over this too?)
IIRC, (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe I Am Missing the Point (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, really, this guy/company is stupid. Of course, "no publicity is bad publicity", just look at Acclaim...
Re:Maybe I Am Missing the Point (Score:4, Informative)
It's a bit like Captain Midnight suing HBO. Very bizarre.
--
Evan
Re:Maybe I Am Missing the Point (Score:5, Interesting)
The claim is pretty bogus because it's sort of like saying "Our company advertises your company by writing grafitti on subway walls. We're suing the subway owners who keep cleaning up the grafitti."
His customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:His customers? (Score:5, Funny)
I can see it now: "The New York Times is reporting that a Class-action lawsuit filed in San Jose, California, demands that internet search engine SearchKing repay millions in lost revenue to all sites not indexed by SearchKing, because its lawsuit against Google caused an upswing in hits for SearchKing-related websites, which drove customers away from the plantiff's websites. In a related note, a lawsuit filed in federal court in New York today by businesses which are indexed by SearchKing, demanding that SearchKing sue Northern Light, AltaVista, Yahoo, and all other internet search engines to require that SearchKing hits be listed first in all returned search results."
They can't be serious. They CAN'T be f*****g serious. People wonder why innovation in this country is at a standstill virtually everywhere
Searchking (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Searchking (Score:5, Funny)
how rich is Google? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:how rich is Google? (Score:3, Interesting)
It also wouldnt supprise me if they got a decent amount of donations just for being the best search engine around. How many hours of research have you saved by just going to google?
Re:how rich is Google? (Score:4, Informative)
Yay. I'm gonna buy a pen. And a hat.
However, I don't think they are hurting right now. Take a look at all the business deals they have made in their timeline [google.com].
If it gets to court... (Score:5, Funny)
SearchKing: We sell banner ads based on...
Judge: Case dismissed.
SearchKing: But, but, but...
Judge: You want to pay the defendant's costs? Great! Keep talking.
LawMeme sums it up best (Score:5, Interesting)
Baseless claim (Score:5, Interesting)
Blackmailing Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Make sure Google is faced with the possibility that it might have to reveal the details of its page ranking algorithm in open court. Might make for a quick settlement.
2) Quick publicity for Search King! They consider themselves a publicity company, after all.
Makes perfect sense to me, especially if you can get an attorney willing to take the gamble. Given the current glut of attorneys, this wouldn't seem to be much of an obstacle.
Re:Blackmailing Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Blackmailing Google? (Score:3, Informative)
SearchKing... of ads (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:SearchKing... of ads (Score:5, Funny)
SELECT * FROM LinksTable ORDER BY AmountPaid DESC
And the rest are stolen (Score:5, Informative)
Google's index of my site:
MMDC Tokyo
Aug 29, 2002 - 11:43 PM, MMDC Tokyo, Time is an illusion.
Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams, Main Menu.
mmdc.net/ - 47k - Cached - Similar pages
SearchKing's:
MMDC Tokyo
Aug 29, 2002 - 11:43 PM, MMDC Tokyo, Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams, Main Menu.
What are the odds that they both crawled my site at exactly the same minute on the same day?
These clowns are pathetic.
Cheers,
Jim
Hillarious? (Score:5, Interesting)
on the grounds the organization arbitrarily and purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites
So, it was an arbitrary ranking, that purposefully targeted him and his customers? I would have thought that arbitrary and purposeful targeting would be mutually exclusive.
I guess he never gave any thought to the possibility that his work sucks. It's always somebody else's fault, isn't it?
Fuckers! (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly, this is a move by Google designed to hurt not only SearchKing, but the general consumer!
Maybe Google Should Sue SearchKing .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it just me, or does this wreak of a cheap PR campaign for SearchKing?
Has anyone even heard of searchking before this article?
Maybe searchking will be able to sell enough casino ads to pay Google for the rights to use thier name in a pointless law suit that is really just a cheap advertising campaign!
Two words for the wonderful people at Google : COUNTER SUIT!!!
Re:Maybe Google Should Sue SearchKing .... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's their way of trying to stay alive when they have NO business plan, NO real product, and NO way to succeed except cheating!
Actually, if google were to put a few lines of code in to totally ignore any links to "Search King", et. al., they'd still be within the law. Google is (last time I looked, anyway) a private business, with no obligation to parasites like Massa.
Google: Single Point of Failure (Score:3, Insightful)
Learning is fun (Score:3, Interesting)
Bob Massa, president of SearchKing., Inc. and PR Ad Network, filed a lawsuit today against Google on the grounds the organization arbitrarily and purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites, causing his business to suffer financially. Massa is asking that the court grant preliminary and permanent injunctions against Google.
Hate to tell you Bob, an action cannot be arbitrarily ("determined by chance") and purposefully ("intentional") committed.
Way to go you...CEO!
Spamming Google for $$$ (Score:5, Interesting)
What an ego! (Score:4, Insightful)
If SearchKing had been the only site whose pagerank changed, I might say they had a case. Unfortunately, several sites [slashdot.org] had their rankings changed by the new algorithm. It doesn't appear to have been a systematic attack directed only at him.
The following quote made me burst out laughing:
Massa explained [...], "High PageRanks don't come easily. The webmaster had to do a lot of work to get enough people linking to him to give him that ranking. They deserve to be paid for that effort."
They found a way to cheat the system and cause google to give results that overvalue their pagerank, and it took effort to implement it for new pages. Because cheating the system isn't easy, they deserve to be paid? I just don't get it.
What's even funnier... (Score:4, Interesting)
The plaintiff (Search King) actually wants a jury trial. Granted, this is Oklahoma and not big-city New York and all; but one has to believe that Google has many clients there. And no matter how back-woods you get, people just hate those nasty people who are responsible for banner ads, annoying links, and all that jaz. Seems to me that Google won't have any problems.
Then again, we're only talking about $75,000 in damages alleged. That's not a lot of money, and Google might do well to just settle the case for around $50,000 or so (without admitting fault or altering their page rank system). Yeah, yeah, I know that it's all "about the point of the matter" and if Google gives in to one company they will look weak and all that. But there's a cost asociated with fighting the complaint, too. And sending attornies to Oklahoma all the time just to spend an hour or two in the court room to hash out every little piece of evidence seems silly. It just gets way too expensive, and settling isn't always a bad option. Sometimes you can spend a fortune proving you're right only to find that it cost you much more in the long run (sometimes even the core business due to the legal fees). Seems like a waste of precious time to me, when Google should be doing what it's best at--search engine technology. I'd almost hate to see them fight this with the risk of losing focus on the core business itself.
Hey look! (Score:5, Interesting)
Care to give him your take on it?
Re:Hey look! (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy shit. Mr. King is even stupider than I originally thought. I'll let him speak for himself.
It's called robots.txt. Learn it. Use it.
Oh, so now you want to destroy search engines themselves. Except for yours. Yeah... um... riiiiiight...
So not even your link spamming buddies are willing to support you. You know you've got it bad when even the pr0n sites and casinos that googlebomb look down on you.
Internet King (Score:3, Funny)
The King is Screwed (Score:4, Interesting)
Right there, you said it King. You have no way to control someone else's own business. If you don't like it, fcsk you.
Later he goes on saying, "In the event the PR of a page with an ad changed, we would simply adjust the pricing or adjust where the ad was being displayed at the advertisers request."
I suppose you will sell your services at a real low price, very shortly :)
Arbitrary vs Purposefully (Score:5, Insightful)
Bob Massa, president of SearchKing., Inc. and PR Ad Network, filed a lawsuit today against Google on the grounds the organization arbitrarily and purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites, causing his business to suffer financially. Massa is asking that the court grant preliminary and permanent injunctions against Google.
from dictionary.com:
arbitrary - Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle
purposeful - Having a purpose; intentional
From what I can tell, it's pretty tough to do something arbitrarily and purposefully.
I wanted to go back and read more of the page.. but it seems that this web hosting site has been
Next they'll sue us (Score:4, Funny)
you're missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the point he is trying to make is that Google is inherently a commercial entity as they provide business referrals. They also value those referral sources relative to one another, and that value determines the number of referrals they are able to push.
Bob King decided to buy/sell pagerank as a commodity, since it has value, and is there. Very American no?
When Bob did this, Google decided to lower the value of his site. What Bob is arguing is that Google did this arbitrarily, not naturally, and that his business (which was in the business, I presume, of convincing people they can attain a high pagerank on google for you, you know Search Engine Optimization) is damaged by being assigned a low pagerank. Which obviously it is. I wouldn't hire and SEO firm with a PR of 4, and neither would you anyone with a clue. Bob knows this.
In a way Bob has a point, if not a case within that point.
Doesn't seem like a search engine to me... (Score:5, Funny)
But wait, there's more! I searched for the same thing in Google and found this site [searchking.com], which is part of SearchKing. It may not explain why SearchKing sucks, but I think it might answer the question, "What are these guys smoking?"
Where's google on search king? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmmm, no link to google on page 1
How about page 2, um, nope
Oh the irony - phorm
The search engine optimisation industry (Score:4, Insightful)
It's sad to see that a technology which started out as such a revolutionary way for users to find information is being so corrupted by those who don't care about the primary reason people use search engines, which is to find the information most relevant to them.
Google is leading the way in providing the high quality results, in contrast to the majority of the other major search engines who willingly compromose the quality of their service for advertising purposes, and for that I respect google highly. I can only hope that they will continue to fight these sorts of activies by improving their technology to effectively prevent search engine spamming becoming a more serious problem, and they are certainly doing a great job of this so far.
The whole search engine optimization industry sickens me. I wish these people would put their efforts towards more useful endevours such as improving the quality of content on sites, or making them better organised/easier to navigate/more accessible. These are the real problems that need to be solved, and will be of actual benefit to end-users.
Truth in advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
If domain is 'pageking' Then
PageRank = 0
End If
Truth in advertising is a good thing. Now, for those claiming government intervention is bad (or that it is Google's algorithem and they can do with it as they please) there are two facts: (a) Google claims that it is a unbiased algorithem, (b) People depend upon this claim when using the service. Thus, while Google is free to change their algoirhtem, they should be constrained to do so in accordance with what they have advertised. Just like when I order a product I expect it to operate as advertised.
So, I'm hopeful that the court case goes forward and that it can set a precident that on-line services can be challenged if someone thinks that it operates with a different spirit than as advertised. That said, I also hope the Judge awards Google appropriate attorney fees after Google wins.
not that I htink P
Search King JINGLE (Score:4, Funny)
and your hit count shows some shrinkage
dig for 209.217.135.144
send a ping!
Mr. Google is a loser,
And I think he is a boozer,
So you better make that call to the Search King!"
Hey Barney, what about a Spanish version:
"Senor Google no es macho,
Es solamente un borracho..."
--Linda
"Devalued"? *snort* (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been yahooing/altavista-ing/metacrawling/googling (in that order, chronologically) since 1997, and lived in Oklahoma City since then, and I've never heard of these people before now.
I suspect they've got a lot of work ahead of them to prove devaluation. :)
Google is a monopoly and should be watched! (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's what I posted in my web log [sooke.bc.ca] when this story broke a couple days ago:
SearchKing runs an elaborate baiting scheme of fake Web pages that link to each other, to try to convince the Google robot to rank its clients' pages higher than you or I would think the pages deserve. Google updated its algorithm to better resist the scheme. SearchKing loses money because of that; SearchKing sues.
I think this is actually less clear-cut than it sounds. SearchKing are bad actors - they were trying to cheat, they don't have a right to do that, it's okay for Google to tweak its algorithms to avoid them, that much is clear. However: what everyone is going to say about this is that Google is a private company and they have a free-speech right to rank pages however the heck they want, and I'm not sure that's actually true. I think there could be situations (not this one, but) where it would be okay for a company to sue Google for ranking them too low.
The reason is that Google is in a monopoly position. Let me say that again: Google is in a monopoly position. It really is. If your Web site gets delisted by Google, or penalized by Google's page ranking algorithm, you don't have the option of saying, "Oh, well, people will find us in some other search engine." It doesn't work that way - everyone uses Google, and if you're not in Google, you're nowhere. Just like everyone uses Microsoft Windows, and if you can't run under Microsoft Windows, you can't run anywhere. Linux, sure, but if you can't run under Windows, you can't run in a large enough number of places that you have a big problem if you were counting on running under Windows. The Google monopoly is actually more solid than Microsoft's because it's not tied to specific independent companies (Intel, etc.) for support.
Google's monopoly means that it does not have complete freedom to rank things however the heck it wants to, the way a smaller search engine might. Google has responsibilities that come from its monopoly. Microsoft cannot legally design its operating system to deliberately screw up its competitors' applications. (Okay, they do that, but they do it illegally.) Google, similarly, should not be allowed to tweak its ranking algorithm in ways that are sneaky and bad. I don't think that penalizing SearchKing is sneaky and bad... but it's easy to imagine that Google could do things that would be sneaky and bad. We just have to trust them not to, and that gives me the willies, especially because Google could do all kinds of things that we'd never know about.
For instance, Google could decide to advocate a political party, and rank that party's pages higher than others, always. Maybe if you searched "Democrat" you would get the Republican anti-Democrat site before the actual Democrat site. (I name U.S. parties because it's more plausible that Google would care about them.) They have plausible deniability, because they could claim that the ranking comes from an objective ranking scheme based on how many links there are, and "Oh, well, I guess there were a whole lot of links to the Republican Web site". That would be sneaky and bad. Google has already shown a willingness to tamper with their search results for reasons that have nothing to do with page relevance, in the xenu.net affair [sooke.bc.ca]. Granted they were between a rock and a hard place on that one, legally, but I'm not sure they made the right decision, and it's a step that puts them on a slippery slope.
Suppose Google quietly made a site disappear; or, better yet, they just make it appear a few notches lower on the list than it otherwise would. That's a very real harm to the site because people only look at the top few links in the search results; losing one position on the list translates into a loss of a large amount of mindshare. If it was a small site that would normally appear low on the list anyway, would we ever know there was manipulation going on? That's why Google's monopoly frightens me - PageRank is secret, we can tell that overall it seems to work fairly, but they could make a large number of individual exceptions to fair ranking and we, the users, would just chalk that up to "Oh, the algorithm isn't perfect". Google could manipulate its results a whole lot and we would have no way of knowing. We just have to trust Google to be honest. Just like we have to trust censorware companies not to put their political and social agendas into the blocking lists. You know how far I trust censorware companies.
I don't think that Google is abusing its monopoly yet - certainly not in the SearchKing case and probably not anywhere else either. But I do think Google has a monopoly, I do think that monopolies are very dangerous, and I think the Google monopoly needs to be watched. I don't think we should be fooled by their open-source heritage and their cute holiday graphics and so on. Google is a large U.S. corporation that's making a lot of money from their monopoly on an important part of the computing business, we have very little way of knowing whether they are acting honestly, and they have incentives to act dishonestly. This is a dangerous situation. Who will be the Linux to Google's Microsoft?
Oh, and hey, they decided they wanted everyone to come to them first for Internet news reporting too. When Conrad Black did that with Canadian news papers, a lot of us were kind of concerned; but when it's the Web, and it's Google, it's all good, and we all like it, because Google Is Cool. Don't say I didn't warn you.
A little background on searchking's owner (Score:4, Informative)
From Salon's [salon.com] Aug 2002 article Meet Mr. Anti-Google [salon.com]:
From this Sept 5 2002 story Engine Trouble [guardian.co.uk] in the Guardian [guardian.co.uk]:
Google becoming a monopoly? This may be legit soo (Score:5, Interesting)
If they get back up to that 79% number and hold it for any length of time, legally, that makes them a monopoly. No matter how much we may like Google today, it's a lot of power for one search engine to be able to have. It seems like a matter of time if they keep gaining share before they start abusing that power. Microsoft was innovating when they were at war against 1-2-3 and Wordperfect just as Google is today against Overture. With AskJeeves, Inktomi and Altavista looking like they'll go away soon, we will see Google to keep 'innovating ' making the little guys not show up in their search engine anymore?
As much as we may love them now, remember who they're trying to serve: their venture (vulture) capitalists.
Does Google recognize link farms yet? (Score:5, Interesting)
The defense mechanism needed in a link-based search engine is to identify groups of sites which link extensively within the group, but have few links from outside the group. The problem is that this is likely to identify as a group any set of sites devoted to a single but obscure subject where most of the people involved know about each other. It's hard to do this on topology alone, although it might turn out to be possible.
google owns you (Score:5, Funny)
The first result is
here [searchking.com] are the results
Two sides to every beef. (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't about the "PageRank algorithm". It's about Google manually assigning a page rank of zero ("the dreaded PR zero" as SK calls it) to punish SK for attempting to abuse the system. SK also claims that Google enforces an idea of "bad neighborhoods" by assigning PR 0 to anyone who links to a PR 0 page.
In other words, Google appears to be using similar tactics to the spam blacklist SPEWS. Both entities:
I use both SPEWS and Google. I like the results. But I realize that concentrated power tends to be abused. And inability to see both sides of the story makes abuse easier.
Re:Two sides to every beef. (Score:4, Informative)
And Google explictly says they will remove people who try to manipulate their ranking system.
It's not a secret system at all. They explictly state they will do what they did if people do what he did.
Oh, and their algorythm isn't secret, it's just patented. You can go and look it up, I think it's on Google's site somewhere. Or you could just google for it. Plenty of other people license it, and if you do so, you can run a carbon copy of Google. (Of course, you need a lot of computers and a fast connection, and obviously if Google has manually assigned rankings you'll have to do it also.) This is actually how 'Search King' works, he writes pages that manipulate the (known) system of ranking by linking to each other, so Google has to manually delete them. I, personally, think that's a great thing for google to do.
And SPEWS isn't 'secret', either, BTW, it's just run secretly. How you get in SPEWS is well known, or at least well assumed...you send mail to their super secret spamtrap addresses. Now, it has no accountablity, but it's not using some voodoo to randomly pick people as spammers.
Re:Hilarious (Score:3, Funny)
Re:everyone click here! (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.searchking.com/servlet/SearchKing?at
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Tosh (Score:5, Insightful)
Google has viewers because it has integrity and quality. If it abuses its position, it first loses integrity and quality and then loses viewers. No government intervention needed.
This isn't comparable with monopoly cases, hell, this isn't even a market liquidity case (i.e. Ebay is dominant because it is dominant, it doesn't pay to auction elsewhere because everybody auctions at Ebay...). Anybody clever enough can set up a server farm and get viewers if they have a Google beating engine quality.
On the legal side, this might be an unfair competition case but its difficult for a competitor (A) to claim that a company's (B) actions within B's business are unfair as they stop A's manipulation of B's business... You have to have clean hands as well to succeed with unfair competition claims.
Re:Error 18437: Joke Failure (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Whine Back To Bob... (Score:4, Informative)
SearchKing, Inc.
13601 Quiet Cove
McLoud, OK 74851
US
405-386-4805
Fax:405-386-4806
Domain Name: SEARCHKING.COM
Administrative Contact:
Massa, Bob bobking@searchking.com
13601 Quiet Cove
McLoud, OK 74851
US
405-386-4805
Fax:405-386-4806
Let us drop [ "Bob Massa" ] into GOOGLE and see what we find...
Bob Massa the Bulk Spammer [larrysworld.com]
[ a bit down the webpage ]
Who's spamming, and does it work?
Bulk e-mail can be effective, but it's not always worth the trouble it can cause the sender. Bob Massa, owner of Magic-City.Net, an Oklahoma City, Okla., company that helps other organizations increase Web traffic by submitting their URLs to search engines, used to send out bulk e-mail to advertise his service. "It was more effective than anything else I've known," he says. "When I started, I was sending 30,000 messages a night and getting about a 1 percent response rate. There were times when I got as many as 200 orders in one day."
So why did Massa quit? Because "it's no longer worth it," he says. "Anti-spammers were sending me mail bombs, hacking my site and harassing me. One irate person sent me snail mail saying that he had mailed me a pregnant venomous spider and hoped it would bite someone and cause serious injury or death."
Calvin Fuller, a Burlingame, Calif.-based entrepreneur, has had similar experiences. Fuller has been involved with several Internet businesses and is developing an online and print magazine called Bikini Models, which he describes as a "PG-rated publication that includes pictures of bikini-clad models."
During the past couple of years, Fuller has used spam extensively but has backed off lately for a number of reasons, including the reactions he got from some recipients. "For every person who is excited about what I'm promoting, I'll hear from a lot more people who take the same amount of time to say how they are annoyed."
Fuller is also having trouble finding ISPs that will let him send bulk e-mail. "Most of the major providers of bulk e-mail-friendly accounts have shut down because other ISPs will block their incoming traffic."
Massa's and Fuller's tales of the treatment they received from anti-spammers were echoed by almost everyone I interviewed who had used spam to market products and services. Onsale Inc., a Menlo Park, Calif.-based public company that holds Web auctions, experimented with bulk e-mail but soon dropped it, according to Michelle Pettigrew, vice president of business development. Onsale used software to crawl the EBay Inc. auction site to pick up about 20,000 names and e-mail addresses.
Although Onsale received a significant number of positive inquiries as a result of its mailings, the company also got a lot of negative comment from EBay, Pettigrew says. In general, the potential for backlash is too great. "There are," Pettigrew adds, "ways to reach those customers through other means--such as banner ads--that are nontoxic."
The reaction against spam has been so strong that even people who use subscription-based lists sometimes get angry letters. I know because I'm one of them. I operate a free mailing list for people interested in following the articles I post to my Web site, www. larrysworld.com. The only way to get on the mailing list is to subscribe, but I've still received a number of angry letters from people who apparently forgot they had subscribed. For a while, a temporary glitch in my software failed to remove people who had asked to be deleted, resulting in several letters threatening legal action or requesting that ISPs block all mail from my account. Most people graciously accepted my apology, but a few remained angry.
[ more on the web page ]
A pic of Bob Massa [i-cop.org]
Bob also owns Searchking, Inc., a unique concept in search engine services which has been online since 1997 and is continuing to grow through a strategy of providing hosted search service software to the public. In a little over one year Searchking has become the largest "portal" host in the world with over 1,000 online portals on it's servers.
Yeah, I can see him as a large "portal" (www.goatse.cx)
But we only need look at his personal webpage
http://www.bobmassa.com/ [bobmassa.com]
A bit of truth even from Bob Massa's lips [buzzle.com]
As the engine has become celebrated for taking users directly to the information they want, though, a question has emerged in the minds of internet entrepreneurs who are no longer the recipients of millions of easy dollars: could it be manipulated for much-needed profit? One of Google's advantages has always been its refusal to sell placements in its rankings to the highest bidder, but the PageRank system, some argue, has its loopholes. Because Google measures how many pages link to a site, what if you set up thousands of web pages solely for the purpose of linking to one commercial site?
Some have accused Bob Massa, proprietor of a "search optimisation" service called Searchking, of doing just that. "All I want is for webmasters with small sites to get rewarded fairly," he says. "This is a chance to see that those guys get visitors and put up good content. Google wants good content. I can't see any problem."