Catching Up: More Google Legal Troubles
Still way behind, this post is dedicated to some legal issues that have popped up about Google the last few days.
Google was issued a subpoena by the Federal Trade Commission, who wants the full contents of a Gmail account. They want it as part of a case against AmeriDept and their founder, Andris Pukke, alleging AmeriDept “deceived customers about credit counseling and failed to use customers’ money to actually pay their creditors”. On Friday, the judge ruled all contents of the Gmail account, including deleted mail, be turned over to the FTC.
The courts have been trying to find Pukke’s assets, including $300 million in back taxes. The Gmail account in question is that of Peter Baker, a shareholder of a developer that the missing money has been linked to. Baker objected to the subpoena when it was issued in November, saying it could reveal confidential information, including attorney-client conversations.
Now that the judge has ruled in favor of the subpoena, we’ll have to see how Google feels. Most likely, they’ll comply, but you never know with these guys.
(via Digg)
Andy Beal worries that this could lead to the end of Gmail, that it could cause a lack of user confidence in Gmail. Andy says you can kiss corporate Gmail goodbye if people can’t count on protection of their privacy, but I’m not so sure. The only thing scarier than a lack of privacy to companies these days is Sarbanes-Oxley, and if Google can be “counted on” to store emails and turn them over to the government, well, in some ways, that makes them a little more valuable.
As ridiculous as it seems…
Meanwhile, in a reversal of one of my favorite stories of last year, a site is suing Google for a drop in search engine rankings, and a lack of customer support regarding that. KinderStart.com, a parental advice site, says that around 12 months ago they suffered a severe drop in rankings and lost 70% of their traffic.
Probably the biggest thing bothering them is that they don’t rank first for their own name. A search for KinderStart reveals thejournal.com as the top result. I wouldn’t be surprised if the poor rankings are due to the fact that, at number 11 in my rankings, the result is:
KinderToday.Com
KinderToday.com (http://www.kindertoday.com) is a user-friendly news board specifically designed for subjects related to pregnancy, parenting, …
www.kinderstart.com:8080/kindertoday/ - 22k - Cached - Similar pages
That “:8080″ refers to a port number, and, in my inexpert analysis, could be a contributor to bad rankings. Almost all of their backlinks are pointed at port 8080 (16,200, in fact), while only 16 point at the dotcom. That could hurt a site in a huge way, especially if the dotcom is considered duplicate content to the .com:8080. Of course, there are a million other possibilities, but that popped up immediately as being bizzarre. I’ve never seen that before.
The dotcom is almost 60 results down in the search results.
Anywho, if they think suing Google over search rankings is going to get them anywhere, they are sadly mistaken. This could be bad SEO, or just an unpopular site, or a million other things, but Google’s results have been ruled protected free speech before. However, there is a great argument that Google is an essential facility, or better, a public utility, since the economy of the internet more and more relies on it. Google should win, but interesting questions will be put to the test before the courts in the process.
42 open tabs, 1480 Bloglines items to go…
I wonder why your results for kinderstart are so different from mine on google. When I search for kinderstart, my first result is www.kinderstart.co.uk
KinderToday is number four on my results, and it moves up to number three when I turn off personalized search.
Comment by rr | March 20, 2006
Kindestart.co.uk and The Journal article seem to fluctuate by me, and .co.uk is number one for me now too. :8080 is still at 11, though.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | March 21, 2006
This leads me to another question. I got a new laptop about two months ago, and many of my google results are different than what I get from my PC. For example, on my laptop I don’t get one-box results.
I am really missing the one-box results (esp. Q&A/News) because I now use my laptop much more than my PC. Do you know why google does this? Is it some kind of personalization thing where they are trying to first learn my habits on the new laptop to know what one-boxex to trigger for my queries?
Comment by rr | March 21, 2006
That is very strange. I’ve never heard of any possible setting that would do that. My only explanation is that you might have a browser extension installed that alters Google, like MoreGoogle.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | March 21, 2006
I don’t use any extensions, except for google toolbar. The only thing on my laptop that is not on my PC is Google Desktop.
From just playing around on the laptop and the PC, I am starting to feel that some kind of behavioral tracking is taking place.
Comment by rr | March 21, 2006
Did these problems exist when you got the laptop, or did they occur later? If later, I’d say spyware. If from the factory, I’d say bundled software.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | March 21, 2006
[…] More Google legal troubles […]
Pingback by Resiny.org Links : | March 22, 2006
[…] There’s a lot of discussion in the blogosphere, needless to say. Nathan Weinberg of Inside Google calls the suit “ridiculous” in Catching Up: More Google Legal Troubles. The Gaping Void blog says, “So people have a constitutional right to Googlejuice? So Googlejuice = Free Speech? That to me seems an insult to the notion of Liberty.” It’s hard to find any blogs that think this suit is a great idea. (Maybe they are out there, but their rankings are terrible. ) […]
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