p2pnet.net news:- California parenting site Kinderstart.com sued Google, claiming the fact it was downgraded in Google’s ranking system defamed it, kept it from expressing itself in a public forum, and violated KinderStart’s contract under Google’s AdSense program.

“KinderStart calls itself a competitor to Google in the specific area where it offers search results,” said PC Advisor. “As part of the suit, it wants Google to reveal how it comes up with its rankings.”

Although rankings are based partly on a mathematical algorithm, Google studies the quality of sites and makes subjective judgments, according to David Kramer, who’s representing Google, said the story.

Now, “A U.S. judge has thrown out a lawsuit challenging the fairness of how Web search leader Google Inc. calculates the popularity of Web sites in determining search results, court papers show,” says Reuters.

“In a ruling issued Friday that came to light Tuesday, Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed a lawsuit against Google by parenting information site KinderStart.

“The judge also imposed yet-to-be-determined sanctions on KinderStart legal counsel Gregory Yu for making unsupported allegations against Google.”

KinderStart had also tried for class action status, “on behalf of what is said were many other sites that suffered the same fate as Google fine-tunes Web site rankings in search results,” says the story.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
Kinderstart.com sued Google - Google page-ranking row, July 4, 2006
PC Advisor - Google attempts to get lawsuit dismissed, July 3, 2006
Reuters - U.S. judge throws out defamation suit against Google, May 20, 2007

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

---

rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site

---

Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 11:54 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 1001 times