US District Court judge dismisses suit attacking Google’s search rankings
A U.S. District Court judge has dismissed the case brought by KinderStart against Google, which claimed that the Internet’s leading search engine used its page ranking powers in an anticompetitive way to block competing search sites.
KinderStart, a Norwalk-based Web site devoted to information about children, sued Google last year claiming that Google had downgraded the company’s search engine ranking without warning, and for no apparent reason.
The company claimed defamation and anticompetitive business practices resulting from the ranking demotion. KinderStart also alleged a large number of other Web sites had been similarly mistreated.
“KinderStart claims that Google has interfered with KinderStart’s First Amendment rights [to free speech]“, and “has engaged in predatory conduct and anticompetitive conduct directed toward achieving the objective of controlling prices and/or destroying competition”, said court papers.
Judge Jeremy Fogel of the US District Court for the Northern District of California threw the case out saying there were insufficient grounds for the case brought by Kinderstart.com to proceed.
The judge stated that:
“KinderStart had failed to explain how Google caused injury to it by a provably false statement … as distinguished from an unfavourable opinion about KinderStart.com’s importance.”
The judge also upheld Google’s right to modify or change its search ranking algorithm at any point:
“PageRank is a creature of Google’s invention and does not constitute an independently-discoverable value. In fact, Google might choose to assign PageRanks randomly, whether as whole numbers or with many decimal places, but this would not create “incorrect” PageRanks.”
In response to the ruling, Google released a statement from Hilary Ware, the company’s litigation counsel: “We always felt these claims were unjustified, because courts have consistently rejected complaints over search engine rankings, so we’re pleased that Judge Fogel promptly dismissed this case.”
KinderStart lawyer Gregory Yu told news agency Reuters, “All options are being explored. That’s all that we are going to say at this point.”
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August 27th, 2011
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