Suing Google over PageRank
I guess this was bound to happen sooner or later. Google is being sued by a company that claims their website’s PageRank was lowered. I would just like to welcome them to the club, it has quite a few members.
Everyone knows that Google updates their PageRank formula and in the next update any site could go from a PR6 to a PR2, maybe even lower. Google’s PageRank isn’t something you should ever base a business model off of - if the majority of your income is coming from traffic sent by Google then you need to find a new source of traffic. What if Google discontinued their search engine or went bankrupt? You can’t sue a company for changing the way it indexes the web in an attempt to provide its customers with better search results and you can’t base your primary source of revenue on the success or failure of another company when you have no control over said company.
The complaint accuses Google, as the dominant provider of Web searches, of violating KinderStart’s constitutional right to free speech by blocking search engine results showing Web site content and other communications.
Google is not a owned by the government (at least not to our knowledge…kidding), they don’t have a responsibility to uphold the constitution - their search engine is their property, it’s not paid for by tax dollars. They can add websites, drop websites, increase PageRanks and decrease PageRanks at their own will. Would KinderStart complain if Google decided to remove all sites from their index that link to or include racist remarks within their content? No.
The lawsuit notes that rival search systems from Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) MSN and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) feature Kinderstart.com at the top of their rankings when the name “Kinderstart” is typed in.
Well, that’s nice. They’re using different algorithms to rank you. They’re including parts of your site Google doesn’t want to include. Google is not under any obligation to do what Microsoft or Yahoo are doing, in fact, I think Google takes pride in doing things diffrently than these two search engines.
The sense of entitlement that this company has is embarassing.
I don’t feel sorry forKinderStart, Google is not obligated to let anyone know about their PageRank. There are hundreds of millions of websites, each one with a PageRank between 0 and 10 - can we really expect Google to email each website owner with an update about their PageRank? No. All we can do is work to make our websites accessible and hope Google notices.
Maybe KinderStart needs to look for a new revenue stream rather than blame Google for their problems.
Related Articles:
- April 2007 Google PageRank Update
- How To Monitor Whether Your Toolbar PageRank Will Change In The Next Update
- Possible Effects of the New Google PageRank
- August 2007 PageRank Update - Full Blown on August 10
- PageRank Update - January 10 2007
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With so much happening in this country, I wonder how the courts find the time to go over such frivolous lawsuits.