Google PageRank Lawsuit Dismissed a Second Time

The San Jose Mercury News this afternoon reports that a US district judge in San Jose has dismissed a case against Google originally filed in March 2006, that alleged its page rankings that pertain to relative placement in search results unfairly rated a particular provider of parenting information lower than other sites in the same category.

This is the second time the case has been dismissed, although Judge Jeremy Fogel has given plaintiff Kinderstart another opportunity to amend and re-file its case yet again.

The original case alleged that Kinderstart had been "blacklisted" by Google, for reasons which attorney Gregory Yu said at the time may have been due to anti-competitive behavior. In its defense, Google argued that its decisions about which sites to place first in its PageRank system could very well be subjective, and Google would have the right as an editorial service provider for it to be so.

In its first May 2006 motion to dismiss, Google's attorneys wrote, "Defendant Google, like every other search engine operator, has made that determination for its users, exercising its judgment and expressing its opinion about the relative significance of websites in a manner that has made it the search engine of choice for millions.

"Plaintiff KinderStart contends that the judiciary should have the final say over that editorial process," the attorneys continued. "It has brought this litigation in the hopes that the Court will second-guess Google's search rankings and order Google to view KinderStart's site more favorably. If KinderStart were right, and websites could use the courts to dictate what the results of a search on the Google search engine should be, neither Google nor any other search engine could operate as it would constantly face lawsuits from businesses seeking more favorable positioning."

Kinderstart re-filed its suit last September; but this time, attorney Yu contended that Google's subjectivity extended to picking content providers that met its political and even religious preferences.

Judge Fogel reportedly stated Yu crossed the line, saying he "overreached" this time. If Kinderstart does re-re-file its suit, it will do so this July.

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