Yet Another Company Suing Google Because Its Ranking Sucks

from the waste-of-time dept

While Google may be happily taking on some lawsuits against incredibly weak claims in order to set better precedents for later, it still gets a bit tiresome when companies don't recognize the precedent and just keep suing. A few years back, a judge quickly dismissed a lawsuit from a website owner who was upset that Google didn't rank his website high enough. Earlier this year, another company dropped its suit after Google pointed out how unlikely it was to win a similar suit. However, that doesn't stop such complaints from still coming in. On Friday, a judge heard opening arguments from another website that isn't happy that Google lowered their Page Rank to 0, effectively demoting it in their index. There simply is no legal basis to demand that Google rank you higher. The company is raising "antitrust, free speech, unfair competition and defamation and libel" issues, though it's likely to have difficulty proving any of those things -- and it appears the judge recognizes that. He repeatedly said that he didn't see where there was defamation (the core of the argument made by the company), noting that "I am still not convinced ... that a provably false statement has been alleged." He also said: "Assuming Google is saying that KinderStart's Web site isn't worth seeing. Why can't they say that? That's my question." So, once again, it seems likely that such a case won't go very far, and hopefully others will begin to realize that if your ranking in Google sucks, you have no right to sue about it.