DOJ Was Three Hours From Suing Google For Antitrust Violations

Legal Issues

from the pick-your-fights dept

It was pretty clear back in September, when the Justice Department hired well-known antitrust litigator Sandy Litvack, that it had decided that it was going to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google, even if there were serious questions about what harm its ad deal with Yahoo would actually cause. Despite plenty of negotiation and totally rewriting the deal, the Justice Department was set on opposing it, leading Google to give up.

Now, that litigator, Sandy Litvack has admitted that the Justice Department was three hours away from filing its antitrust suit, which he was “looking forward to” and he’s apparently disappointed he didn’t get to go to court over it. That seems troublesome. If the purpose of antitrust activity is to protect consumers, then its litigators should be pretty happy that it avoided a (taxpayer-funded) legal battle.

Filed Under: antitrust, justice department
Companies: google, justice department, yahoo

Court Says Yahoo And Google Aren't Liable For Gambling Ads

Legal Issues

from the thank-you-section-230 dept

It’s been really weird to see various politicians in the US go after online gambling in a variety of questionable ways, from Kentucky’s attempt to seize domain names to the federal government forcing banks to block financial transactions for any gambling site. But one of the oddest moves has been to go after any publication that allowed online gambling ads to show up on their website. More than four years ago a bunch of websites, including Yahoo and Google were sued for allowing gambling ads to show up on searches. The two big search engines eventually settled with the federal government to try to block out gambling ads, but this particular lawsuit, based on California state law, continued.

It took a while, but a court has finally ruled that the search engines are protected by section 230 of the CDA, and they aren’t responsible for ads posted by users — even if they happen to get through the filters that Google and Yahoo set up to try to prevent gambling ads. There are a few important points to note here: (1) Just because the site is getting paid for the content, does not mean that section 230 safe harbors don’t apply. We often hear people say that if a company is making money they must lose the safe harbors. That’s simply not true, (2) Just because the search engines proactively try to filter out the content, they don’t lose the safe harbors either. In fact, in this case the judge seems even more sympathetic because of that. There’s a misconception out there among many that if you do meddle in the content at all, you give up your safe harbors. Again, that’s not true.

Filed Under: ads, gambling ads, liability, section 230
Companies: google, yahoo

Argentinian Celebrities Succeed In Forcing Search Engines To Block Search Results On Their Name

Legal Issues

from the internet-stupidity dept

Proving, once again, that common sense isn’t so common, News.com is reporting on a series of orders handed down by judges in Argentina that have forced Google and Yahoo to completely block searches on certain Argentinian celebrities. Apparently, some Argentinian models who were upset that their pictures were showing up on some porn sites, sued both Yahoo and Google. For anyone who understands just about anything about how the internet works, it would be easy to recognize that this lawsuit was grossly mistargeted. Yahoo and Google have nothing to do with the content on the various websites they point to, but apparently Argentinian models and judges do not seem to recognize this.

So, the judges issued an injunction, demanding that Google and Yahoo block references to the models. This “win” caused other Argentinian celebrities who were upset with content online about them to seek out the same lawyer, who filed similar lawsuits over and over again. Each time, the court has issued an injunction, forcing Google and Yahoo to block results on those individuals. In some cases, they’ve tried to block specific results, but in at least one case, Yahoo has blocked all results on a search for Argentinian soccer star Diego Maradona. The blocks only impact the Argentinian sites, but it still seems fairly ridiculous.

Google is appealing the injunctions, saying that this really seems like something of a shakedown. The company is also trying to explain to the Argentinian government why it should put in place safe harbor laws that protect service providers from being liable for the content created by others. Of course, even without such laws in place, common sense should prevail. Apparently, though, common sense remains less common than commonly believed.

Filed Under: argentina, celebrities, liability, safe harbors, search engines
Companies: google, yahoo

Justice Department May Have Just Killed Yahoo; Google Drops Partnership

Deals

from the you-wanted-less-competition,-you-got-it dept

Well, apparently even the greatly scaled back version of their ad partnership wasn’t enough to appease a Justice Department intent on suing Google for antitrust no matter what the real issues are. Google had previously threatened to kill the deal if the Justice Department didn’t ease up on its position, so it really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Google has now dropped out of the deal entirely.

The government is still insisting that it would have represented a monopoly, as around 90% of the “relevant market” would have been managed by one company. First of all, they were only looking at the search ad market, which is hardly the relevant market. Advertising budgets pay for much more than search ads, and if search ads really became more expensive, it would only open up opportunities for alternative means of advertising. Besides, there was still little to no indication that any such deal would increase advertising fees. Given Google’s auction based system, and the fact that this would increase inventory, there’s plenty of reason to believe it would actually decrease advertising costs.

In the end, killing off this deal may represent a pretty big blow to Yahoo’s chances of moving forward as an independent concern. The company was very much relying on the Google deal to stabilize its financial condition. Without that, Yahoo is in trouble — meaning there’s probably a good chance that Microsoft takes another look at acquiring the company for much, much less than before. That means, Yahoo as we know it, disappears. Considering the Justice Department wanted more competition rather than less, it’s unfortunate that it’s misguided decision is effectively killing off one of the competitors.

Filed Under: antitrust, justice department
Companies: google, yahoo

Yahoo And Google Revise Deal To Try To Win Antitrust Approval

Deals

from the bargaining dept

With Yahoo and Google in the midst of a vast negotiation with the Justice Department to try to avoid an antitrust lawsuit over their proposed ad deal — even to the point of Google threatening to back out entirely — it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they’re going to propose various modifications to the deal.

The news today is leaking that the two companies are proposing a greatly scaled back version of the deal to see if it passes Justice Department muster. In this case, the deal would be shortened from 10 years to just two, and would limit how much revenue it could represent to Yahoo while also allowing any advertiser to opt out of the deal. We’re still waiting for a clear explanation of how this deal will actually negatively impact consumers, but some people still insist it will. For those who believe so, let’s ask a simple question: how is this any worse than Yahoo disappearing from the marketplace? Because if the company doesn’t do something soon that may be what we’re looking at.

Filed Under: antitrust
Companies: google, justice department, yahoo

Google And Yahoo May End Deal; Not Worth An Antitrust Lawsuit

Deals

from the ouch-for-yahoo dept

With various politicians pushing the Justice Department to slam Google on antitrust charges (it’s worth noting, of course, that Rep. Joe Barton, who seems to be leading the anti-Google charge, just so happens to have received an awful lot of campaign money from AT&T — Google’s arch nemesis), it appears that Google and Yahoo’s attempt to broker a deal with the Justice Department may be falling through.

Reports are coming out that the two companies are ready to announce that they’re walking away from their planned deal. This actually represents a bad end result for almost everyone involved. Yahoo will be hurt the most by this, and the last thing Yahoo needs right now is more trouble. For Google it’s a loss, but not a huge loss. Microsoft comes out of it happy (and will gleefully watch Yahoo’s stock continue to slide). It’s still unclear what actual harm it would do to the marketplace to have Google running ads on Yahoo, but since when is politics about reason?

Filed Under: advertising, antitrust, deals
Companies: google, justice department, yahoo

Internet Companies Pay Lip Service To Human Rights

News You Could Do Without

from the actions-speak-louder-than-words dept

After all the controversy, and threats of Congressional action, over actions by companies like Yahoo and Google to appease foreign governments against what many consider basic human rights issues, various internet companies have agreed on a set of “guidelines” for how they deal with human rights issues. While it’s nice that they’re actually thinking about these issues, the guidelines on the whole are pretty weak and don’t bind the companies to do anything. Basically, it just says that the companies will consider the human rights issues in their decision making. If anything, this seems like an attempt to just keep the government from legislating on the issues, and it may not be very successful on that front. The real test will be in seeing how these companies actually act, rather than what sorts of guidelines they’ve signed.

Filed Under: actions, china, human rights, internet companies, words
Companies: google, yahoo

Search Engine Cache Isn't Copyright Infringement

Legal Issues

from the good-news-for-search-engines dept

There are some out there who have suggested that search engines such as Google and Yahoo are basically just massive copyright violators, because they scan, index and keep an archive of websites. That copied archive (usually called a cache) is, according to these commenters, an unauthorized copy. Now a court has basically destroyed that argument, noting that putting content online is giving an implicit license for search engines to index and copy. The lawsuit also claimed that individuals who visited the cached version were also infringers — but the court also rejected that argument, claiming that the implied license extends to those users. The only part of the case that seems to be moving forward is whether or not this implicit license was broken after the lawsuit started and search engines still didn’t take down the content. The idea there was that any explicit notification by the content holder might override the implicit license — and thus search engines should have taken down the content as soon as the lawsuit started (thus signaling an explicit revoke of the license). Of course, the whole thing seems pretty silly. If the guy didn’t want his content indexed, he should learn what a robots.txt file is for.

Filed Under: cache, copyright, search engine
Companies: google, microsoft, yahoo

American Airlines Cuts & Pastes Its Keyword Ad Lawsuit; Tries Again With Yahoo

Legal Issues

from the search-and-replace dept

Last year, we were surprised to see American Airlines sue Google over the fact that competitors were buying keyword-based ads on American Airlines’ trademarks. Plenty of similar lawsuits had been brought, but for the most part (in the US at least), search engines are on the right side of the law. First of all, simply buying keywords based on trademarks isn’t considered a violation of the trademark. Trademark law doesn’t give you total control over the mark, but it is designed to prevent confusing uses. Advertising against a competitor isn’t a confusing use by itself, so long as it’s clear that the advertiser is different from the trademark holder. Second, and more importantly, even if it was a violation of trademark, the liability should fall on the advertiser, not the search engine. Since the search engine is just a platform, the real claim should be against whoever created and paid for the advertisement.

Given that the search engines have come out on top in many such cases, we were surprised this past summer to see Google and American Airlines settle the case, while keeping the actual details secret. Initially, it appeared that Google had won the settlement, as it was still possible to find those competing ads. However, it’s possible that the terms of the settlement hadn’t taken effect yet, as a more recent search no longer finds those ads. Even more damning is the news that American Airlines has now basically done a copy & paste and search & replace on the original lawsuit and re-filed it against Yahoo. It even includes the same mistakes as the first lawsuit. As Eric Goldman notes, this is strange for a variety of reasons, including the fact that Yahoo is known to be much more friendly to trademark holders in such cases. However, this certainly suggests that Google may have caved in its settlement, rather than the other way around. If so, that would have been an unfortunate decision by Google, and Google’s settlement may only lead to more trademark holders taking their chances on suing as well.

Filed Under: search ads, trademark
Companies: american airlines, google, yahoo

Google And Yahoo Negotiating With Justice Department Over Antitrust

Legal Issues

from the trying-to-avoid-a-lawsuit dept

With the Justice Department making it clear that it wanted to go after Google for possible antitrust violations, it appears that Google has recognized the time isn’t right to be defiant, but to get a seat at the negotiating table. The company, along with Yahoo, is apparently in talks with the Justice Department to see what it can do to avoid getting sued for antitrust violations. While it’s obviously way too early to see whether or not this works, it must be better than waiting until the whole thing gets hashed out in court. It’s still difficult to see what sort of antitrust violation there really is here, but that wouldn’t stop the government from bringing a costly lawsuit if some sort of deal isn’t worked out quickly.

Filed Under: antitrust, negotiating
Companies: google, yahoo