Fun with the Law, Google and profiteers

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Not that I'm in any way prejudging the case, but Google is being sued by SearchKing because, as part of its recent revamp of its PageRank algorithms, it demoted SearchKing and a number of SearchKing-promoted sites - and given that SearchKing makes a living on the basis on increasing its clients' PageRank ratings, it felt understandably miffed. (Which is not to say that it was moral or right to piggy-back on Google, of course.)

James Grimmelmann has an entertaining summary of the case between the two companies (via Scripting News, of which I noticed the following snippet:

At the pleading stage of a lawsuit, it's both reasonable and normal to assert two mutually inconsistent factual theories or to ask for two mutually incompatible remedies.

God bless lawyers. Or rather, don't.

Incidentally, I think James is right in the following description of Google:

It can recommend sites or not, at its discretion; it can rank them however it chooses to. That's its business, and it would be inconsistent with our assumptions about society, commerce, and the Internet to force it to "recommend" SearchKing to the tune of PageRank 8. I find this argument persuasive; I think it gets right our intuitive notions about why Google should be free to alter its ranking algorithms according to current law.

But, of course, even if he is, IANAL.

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