Web Site Files Complaint Against Google
March 18 / 12PM
SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc.'s mysterious methods for ranking Web sites came under attack Friday in a lawsuit accusing the online search engine leader of ruining scores of Internet businesses that have been wrongfully banished from its index.
The civil complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose by KinderStart.com, seeks to be certified as a class action representing the owners of all Web sites blacklisted by Google's Internet-leading search engine since January 2001.
KinderStart, a Norwalk-based Web site devoted to information about children, says it was dropped from Google's index a year ago without warning.
Read the full story.
This is a joke, right?
Google is a private business that provides a free service. They have the right to index, rank, spider, etc. the internet and display these search results to whomever they choose, however they choose. It's not a right for businesses to rank in a certain fashion. If Google decides tomorrow that they only want to rank subdomains of furnitureporn.com, or only domains that contain variations of the term "tastybleucheesespread", that is their absolute right.
There's more than a few privately owned link directories online too. Should any business have the right to demand that their site's domain be included? Absolutely not. That is entirely up to the directory owner's discretion.
This is ridiculous and any judge worth his salt will see to it this suit is rightfully and immediately dismissed.
UPDATE: Apparently, back in '03, some other idiot already tried to do this and got a full-on beat-down by the court. God, I love justice.
A good note from TechDirt.com: "The real issue is that, even though many companies do, relying on a single source as a way of driving business is always a risky position to be in. It's a business decision to rely on Google, and not look for other methods of driving traffic. Google is an outside party and can do what they want. While many people do rely on Google, that doesn't mean they have to do anything for other sites, other than try to keep their index as relevant as possible to keep their users happy."
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