KinderStart Sues Google Over Drop in PageRank

[mandy]

2 smileys sum up my feelings on this lawsuit:  : 

A few of the press articles about this case incorrectly state that the site was "blacklisted" (removed from Google's index) which is not true.  The site is still indexed by Google, however, Google dropped its PageRank to 0.

Web site sues over drop in rank
PLUNGE IN PAGE VIEWS AND AD REVENUE `CATACLYSMIC,' SAYS KINDERSTART.COM

Google has mysteriously downgraded the search ranking of a Web site geared to help parents care for young children, causing a ``cataclysmic fall'' in advertising revenue and the number of monthly page views, according to a class-action lawsuit filed Friday.

The civil suit by KinderStart.com of Norwalk seeks financial damages and more information about Google's secret method for ranking sites. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, seeks class-action status for other sites that have seen their rankings drop without warning or explanation from the Mountain View search giant.

full article: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/14130373.htm

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.

full article: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financial...pn_tech_up&chan=tc

An AP wire story states that KinderStart claims Google blacklisted its website which would mean the site would not be found in Google. However, KinderStart.com has over 43,000 pages in Google.

The legal issue probably centers on PageRank because all 43,000 KinderStart.com pages have a rank of zero. Google famously uses PageRank to help determine results for web searches. A rank of zero would likely mean KinderStart would rarely show up in the top ten results for any search.

full article: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnew...eRank.html

[amy]

[quote author=mandy link=topic=3075.msg11109#msg11109 date=1142770629]
2 smileys sum up my feelings on this lawsuit:  : 
[/quote]

:ditto: , but they are getting lots of free press coverage out of this--maybe that was the whole idea behind filing this suit? 

[rose]

[bargainbloodhound]

If they manage to win this lawsuit and they receive a large settlement then I'm going to buy 500 domain names, get every single one of the names blacklisted and then file a lawsuit...and after I win I'm going on a very long vacation. 

[mandy]

A copy of the court filing in this case: http://www.mercurynews.com/multimedia/me...031806.pdf

From the court filing:

1. This action arises from an aggregation of federal and California constitutional
violations, federal antitrust violations, and state unfair trade, defamatory and good faith and fair
dealing violations due to conduct and practices by the world's most widely used search engine and seemingly ubiquitous global leader focusing on how people connect with information and
how they will connect with information in the future, which individually and together warrant
declaratory and injunctive relief as well as monetary damages according to proof under
applicable law based on injuries to Plaintiffs’ person, property, and businesses.

2. Notwithstanding its public statements that it will make its “vast online index” “freely
available” and that its “search results will be objective,” from a dominant and monopolistic
position in certain markets, Defendant Google, Inc. (“Google”), by and through its search
engine, unilaterally and summarily terminated the free flow of speech, traffic and commerce that
otherwise would have run by virtue of the normal search engine operation from thousands of
users to a sundry of Websites, including those of Plaintiffs. These unilateral and unreasonable
acts constitute an ongoing practice of blockage of such Websites, referred to herein as
“Blocking” or “Blockage”1. This Blockage is contrary to Google’s publicly sworn statements
regarding its objectivity and free availability of “relevant information.” Furthermore, each and
every one of these Websites, including that of Plaintiff KSC, are entitled to exercise their
constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech in a open, publicly accessible forum and their
right to compete fairly in cyberspace, free of oppressive conduct and practices of a monopolist in
these markets. Defendant Google singularly occupies and exploits this role.

15. This action responds to Google’s pervasive monopolistic practices in the conduct of
trade or commerce. Such practices achieve three distinct consequences – denial of both federal
and California constitutional guarantees of free speech exercisable by participants in
communication in cyberspace, prevention and destruction of competition in horizontal markets,
and extraction of predatory pricing in the Internet advertising market.
16. At one time, KinderStart.com (“KS.com”) was one of the choicest Internet
destinations for thousands of parents, caregivers, educators, nonprofit and advocacy
representatives, and federal, state and local officials in the United States and worldwide to access
vital information about infants and toddlers – basically from prenatal to infancy to age 7.
Plaintiff’s website KS.com is a directory and search engine that offers vital links to information
and sites on key subjects affecting young children, including child rearing, child care, child
development, food and nutrition, and education, under the tagline “Because kids don’t come with
instructions™”.
17. Plaintiff KSC originally launched KS.com in May 2000 with active and intense
development of its content, directory, index and search engine capabilities. Steady, organic
growth in visits and page views, without financial or artificial incentives, accompanied the
efforts of Plaintiff KSC. At its peak, KS.com was presenting in excess of 10,000,0000 page
views to visitors on a monthly basis.
18. Beginning in 2003, Plaintiff KSC enrolled into Defendant Google’s AdSense
Program and placed a series of sponsored links for compensation from Google under this
program. Following enrollment into the program by Plaintiff KSC, in or about August 2003, Plaintiff KSC began placement of a series advertisements out of the Google Network onto
KSC.com and began to receive fee payments from Defendant Google for rendering these
services under the AdSense Program.

19. Defendant Google’s Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2005 (the
“Google 2005 10-K”), in Part 1, Item 1. Business on file with the Securities and Exchange
Commission as of March 16, 2006 states in no uncertain terms:
We maintain the largest, most comprehensive index of web sites and other
content, and we make this information freely available to anyone with an Internet
connection.
(Emphasis added.)
20. Defendant Google has ownership and control over a computer process known as
“PageRank”, which is an automated, computer algorithm that generates a score that reflects the
extent and nature of hyperlinking within the Internet to a particular Website and its web pages.
In a simplified sense, if there are more third-party hyperlinks into a Website’s web page, there
are a greater number of points mathematically awarded to such page under PageRank. This
process is analogous to a means to quantify the cross-citations among all scientific periodicals
ever published and indexed for this purpose. Therefore, PageRank is not a mere statement of
opinion of the innate value or human appeal of a given Website and its web pages. Instead, it is
a mathematically-generated product of measuring and assessing the quantity and depth of all the
hyperlinks on the Web that tie into PageRanked Website, under programmatic determination by
Defendant Google. Google’s “ToolBar” explains that “PageRank is Google’s measure of the
importance of [a] page.”

21. Defendant Google operates a public, openly accessible search engine (the “Google
Engine”) that actively invites to “anyone with an Internet connection” worldwide to perform
searches for Websites and Webpages (collectively “Web Content”) through the input of one or
more key words into the user’s Web browser. The results of a search performed by the Google
Engine for Web Content are presented on the user’s screen as a “Search Engine Results Page” (“Results Page”). The Results Page purport to present various Web Content destinations listed
in a numerical rank on the left side of the user’s screen.
22. On information and belief, Defendant Google is directly and solely responsible
for launching and using the practice of Blockage of independently owned and managed
Websites. One purported description of this process is that a Website is catalogued and isolated
from open search queries until, under Defendant’s sole and absolute discretion, such site has
served sufficient time in probation inside the “Sandbox” before release by Defendant Google.
On information and belief, Google does not explain why some Websites remain in a
probationary period for a short period while others in a longer period. Furthermore, Google as a
corporation does not formally acknowledge this probationary period generally or with respect to
any specific Website and Google does not provide an explicit justification of these actions.
23. On information and belief, another purported description of the process of
Blockage is the “penalization” of Web sites presumably based on either stated or unstated
“quality guidelines.” In one example of this scenario, a Website which previously had a high
PageRank and appeared favorably in search results pages might overnight find that their
PageRank is low or even zero and appearing unfavorably in the results pages. Google does not
generally inform Websites that they have been penalized nor does it explain in detail why the
Website was penalized.
24. On information and belief, Defendant Google exercised Blockage upon
unknowing members of the Class that effectively choked off search-driven traffic into the
multitude of Websites owned and managed by such Class members. On information and belief,
Blockage may occur at any time during the life of a Website that previously was receiving
referrals through the otherwise normal, objective and/or programmatic operation of the Google
Engine.
25. On information and belief, it has been and continues to be, impossible for a Class
member to move its Website out of the probationary Sandbox Blockage by calling, e-mailing or
otherwise notifying Defendant Google, and there is no process to get a report of whether or why
a Website might have been penalized and thereby Blocked.

26. On March 19, 2005, Plaintiff KSC’s Website kinderstart.com suffered a
cataclysmic fall of 70% or more in its monthly page views and traffic. Thereafter, KSC.com’s
monthly average of page views for the last 11 calendar months through February 2006 was a
meager 30% of monthly levels prior to March 2005. Initially, KSC did not know why its Web
traffic had dropped so dramatically -- it had not been provided any notices, and certainly no
advance notices, whether or why its Web traffic might decrease. Eventually, KSC realized that
common key word searches on Defendant Google’s search engine no longer listed
www.kinderstart.com as a result with any of its past visibility.
27. By April 2005, Plaintiff KSC’s monthly AdSense revenue suffered an equally
precipitous fall by over 80%. With the sharp fall-off in search engine referrals from
www.google.com, quite naturally and automatically click-throughs for the sponsored ads on
KSC.com would drop proportionately with the actual key word search traffic sent from
Defendant Google.
28. In March 2005, the top referring site for KS.com was Defendant Google
(www.google.com). In April 2005 and for every single month since, www.google.com no longer
even made the top 10 URL referrers. Since that time, the percentage of referrals from Defendant
Google as to KS.com has fallen to less than 0.01%. The KSC.com site was officially, practically
and illegally Blocked by Defendant Google.
29. Although Google initially denied the existence of Blockage, at pertinent times
including during a public technology conference in San Jose in August 2005, an employee of
Defendant Google acknowledged that it indeed practiced some form of Blockage. Defendant’s
employees now euphemistically labels this practice of Blocking Websites as “search quality
improvement.”
30. On information and belief, though Defendant claims that it engages in “search
quality improvement” to remove undesirable content, Google recently identified a fairly
significant number of Websites with content it assessed to be “good” that had been blocked
without notification of any kind. Some of these Websites might still not know that they are
being Blocked. On information and belief, the number of Websites in the initial identification and assessment approached one hundred.
31. On information and belief, Defendant negligently, willfully and/or intentionally
interposed and continues to interpose one or more filters as Blockage upon a multitude of
Websites of the Nationwide Class, including that of Plaintiff KSC. There was and is no notice or
understanding from the public, the cyberspace community or webmasters at large as to (a) which
sites are Blocked, (b) how and why they are Blocked, and © when, if ever, they can ever be
unblocked and have the filter lifted. On information and belief, Defendant Google has embarked
on a program of communication to either refrain from further disclosure altogether or engage in
active denial, misinformation or disinformation concerning the role of Blockage in Defendant’s
processing of over 250 million key word search requests each day.
32. Plaintiff KSC has never been notified by telephone, mail or in person of the fact
that Defendant Google Blocked KSC.com, or why this occurred to KS.com. Further, Plaintiff
KSC never received any notice or instruction on what method or procedure, if any, could or
should be used by Plaintiff KSC to cause Defendant Google or the Google Engine to cease the
Blockage of KS.com.
33. On information and belief, hundreds and hundreds of Websites as owned and
operated by the Class members suffer an identical malady – Blockage for anywhere from a
couple of weeks to 18 months or more, with absolutely no notice or warning whatsoever.
34. On information and belief, a multitude of Websites of Class members consistently
receive significantly and relatively high rankings and referrals from other search engines such as
MSN and Yahoo, but suffer deflated ratings and rankings from search engine results presented
by Defendant Google’s Engine.
35. Defendant Google now dominates the search engine industry and is the largest
and most popular search engine not only within the United States but worldwide. By now,
Defendant generates and processes search queries of the more than 10 billion Web pages
currently indexed by Defendant Google on its tens of thousands of servers. Any Website
seeking to gain visibility, site traffic and page views must rely upon Defendant Google’s Google
Engine as an essential facility for receiving search query hits.. Among the purported reasons forthis domination as a search engine are: Massive accumulation of intellectual and technology
resources arising from its initial public offering monopolistic pricing, expansive market
capitalization, and economic exploitation of internet advertising channels as a sole-source buyer
and sole-source seller. As other competitors in this market are not focused principally on search
technology, their respective market shares in search engine usage have steadily fallen. The
construct of Defendant’s worldwide channeling network and market positioning has become the
prohibitive barrier to entry by prospective competitors and has harmed and continues to harm
competition.
36. To attract and retain search users for the Google Engine and to increase the appeal
and value of its advertising initiatives and programs for the members of the Class and owners
and operators of Websites worldwide, Defendant Google touts its search results as “objective”
search results.
37. Defendant Google also states that “[i]t is Google’s policy not to censor search
results. However, ... [w]hen we remove search results ... we display a notice on our search
results pages.”
38. Defendant Google during 2005 previously posted in its Google Help Center the
question, “Does Google ever manipulate its search results?” The previously posted reply by
Defendant to its own question was: “The order and contents of Google search results are
completely automated. No one ever hand picks a particular result for a given search query....”
This query and associated reply in their entirety cease to exist on the Google Help Center.
39. On information and belief, Plaintiffs allege that Defendant Google has at least
75% of the relevant market for search-driven Internet advertising, which includes AdWords
advertising. Defendant is easily the largest and best recognized online advertising network in the
United States for millions of third-party Websites.
40. On information and belief, Plaintiffs allege that as of February 2006, Plaintiffs are
informed and believe that Defendant Google has garnered in excess of 50% market share of all
closed and open access search engine use on a combined basis and in excess of 70% market
share of all open access search engine use.

42. On information and belief, no other search engine except for Google acting as a
monopolist, engages in the pattern and practice of Blockage of innocent and unsuspecting
Websites owned and operated by members of the Class. On information and belief, Defendant
Google’s Search Results for Websites of Class members are substantially different in content and
ranking from those generated by other search engines such as MSN and Yahoo.

The full complaint is 26 pages. http://www.mercurynews.com/multimedia/me...031806.pdf

[stardust]

and after I win I'm going on a very long vacation. 

After you win, your lawyers will get to go on a very long vacation.

[mandy]

Another similar lawsuit. :

Lawsuit filed in early May against Google alleging breach of contract over drop in search rankings is dismissed.

Roberts principally alleges a breach of contract. He claims that Google's "add your URL" feature constituted a unilateral offer, and part of the contract terms were various marketing representations that Google makes throughout its site, including

* Google uses PageRank to determine which pages are most important
* Google determines which pages are relevant to a search
* Google lists the most relevant and reliable results for searchers

Robert claims that he accepted Google's offer by submitting his URLs to Google, and that Google breached by downgrading/de-indexing him. As an integral but unstated part of his claims, Roberts apparently believes that his sites are more relevant/important to searchers than the sites Google chose to display...

full article: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/200...oids_a.htm

copy of the lawsuit: http://law.marquette.edu/goldman/roberts...plaint.pdf

[rose]

The KinderStart court hearing is Friday.  KinderStart issued a press release.  ;D

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060623/laf016.html?.v=59

At 9:00 a.m. on Friday, June 30, 2006 in United States Federal Court, 280 S. First Street, Courtroom #3, San Jose, California, a drama will play out between KinderStart.com (a site for kids zero to seven and their parents) and the giant of the Internet, Google, controlling up to 80% or more of 'Net searches worldwide.

I cracked up reading the mind of God shit:


If the Federal judge rules in favor of KinderStart on any of the nine counts, sunlight will finally begin to lift the dark and secret shroud that covers the Googleplex.

Google's co-founder Larry Page declared that a search engine should be "like the mind of God."

"It's clear Google is acting like god as they determine what we mortals shalt and shalt not see," stated Victor Goodman, Founder of KinderStart.com.

[mandy]

A federal judge in California hinted that a parenting Web site that's suing Google over a poor ranking in the search giant's massive index would be able to proceed with its lawsuit.

During a hearing here Friday, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel said he's considering issuing an order that would allow KinderStart.com to amend its lawsuit against Google to add more specifics. The parent-focused directory and search engine site claims Google violated antitrust and other laws by handing KinderStart low rankings...

"What Google is trying to do is take out the competition," said Gregory Yu, KinderStart's attorney...

full article: http://news.com.com/Suit+over+poor+Googl...g=nefd.top

[rose]

"What Google is trying to do is take out the competition,"

If Kinderstart amends the complaint to focus on that angle I believe they have a shot at bringing home the bacon.    There is no disputing Google wants to "take out the competition". There is no better way to grow your market share than by using a monopoly position to hide the existence of the competition.