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Can an Algorithm be Intimidated?
July 04, 2006
One would hope not.
Yet, as we were all readying our kindling sticks for bomb and brat alike here in the old US of A, many of us seem to have missed this very, very strange blurb:
A FEDERAL JUDGE FRIDAY INDICATED that he is inclined to allow a company to proceed with a lawsuit against Google stemming from low rankings in search results, according to published reports of the proceeding. The judge reportedly said he might permit KinderStart.com to amend its complaint against Google by spelling out its allegations in greater detail. In March, KinderStart.com sued Google, alleging that last year, Google wrongfully lowered KinderStart's ranking in the results, sending its traffic plummeting by 70 percent.
Blogcritics.org, to their credit, had the only extended piece on the courtly decision, one we had laughed away as an impossibility only 3 Months ago with a flavor of derision we will partly reprise here to jog our riders' memories:
The last sentence [about KinderStart seeking to force Google to reveal its algorithm] is laughable, and you are likely laughing with me right now as you read this, yet the sentiment expressed in the foregoing is very real and serious if you've had the nightmare I opened with or, worse, been in a real staff meeting careening out of control with organic rankings rage. You see, some people in a company have a notion, difficult to be disabused of, that organic rankings are a right- as if there were some Bill of Rights relative to company web sites and how they rank in the organic results.
We stand by our previous derisiveness.
U.S. District Court Justice Jeremy Fogel, however, doesn't, persuaded by the old antitrust boogeyman:
Kinderstart claims that Google violates antitrust laws in delivering rankings based on secret criteria. The suit seeks damages, but more importantly, it seeks disclosure of the methods Google uses to rank sites. It calls Google's practices anti-competitive, and it was this claim of anti-competitive behavior leading to antitrust that caused U.S. District Court Justice Jeremy Fogel to suggest that he intends to let the case proceed. A hearing in the case has been set for September 29, 2006.
Fogel did draw a line of absurdity, though, thankfully:
A claim that Google violated the first-amendment rights of Kinderstart did not seem to move the judge.
Whew.
see all posts by John Lustina
posted by John Lustina at July 4, 2006 08:58 AM
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