Kenrick Josephs, Staff Reporter
SEARCH ENGINE giant, Google Inc. defended its system of ranking web search results after Kinderstart.com filed a lawsuit after receiving a 'zero' ranking in its PageRank system and blocked the site.
At a recent hearing, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in San Jose, Judge Jeremy Fogel heard arguments about a Google motion to dismiss the case.
The Norwalk, Calif.-based KinderStart site, which provides information about parenting and related topics, said Google violated their contract under the Google AdSense programme which carries ads distributed by Google. These actions, KinderStart says, defamed and restricted it from expressing itself in a public forum.
Having its own specialised search page, KinderStart calls itself a competitor to Google in the specific area where it offers search results and said the site suffered a major drop in visits as a result of Google's actions. As part of the suit, it wants Google to reveal how it comes up with its rankings.
FREE SPEECH PROTECTION
Google said its search rankings are opinions and entitled to free-speech protection. Although rankings are based partly on a mathematical algorithm, Google also studies the quality of sites and makes subjective judge-ments, said David Kramer, an attorney representing Google.
Attorneys for Google argued that the search giant can use any criteria it wants to rank websites -- including ranking competitors or sites that offer their own search engines lower, even when their content is relevant to the search terms.
While not conceding that Google actually downgrades competitors, Kramer argued that if KinderStart can sue Google because the search engine didn't give its site enough promotion, there's nothing to stop other search engine rivals like Microsoft Corp. or Yahoo Inc. from doing the same thing.
At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Fogel scheduled additional hearings for September, an indication that he might allow the suit to continue to move forward despite motions by Google to dismiss the case.
Sources: TechNewsWorld.com and ComputerWorld.com
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