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Friday, March 26, 2004
Ego Surfing Meets L.A. Law
You're familiar with Ego Surfing, right? Typing your name into Google to see what Google says about you. But what if you don't like what Google says? Well this is America, so of course the answer is -- sue 'em! Frankly, I'm suprised it took this long.
Of course, we all know that Google isn't really "saying" anything about you when they deliver search results . . . right? Maybe not. Mark Maughn, a CPA in SoCal, just filed a lawsuit against Google (and AOL, TimeWarner, and Yahoo) for libel, based on what came up in the Google search results.
A year ago, friends of Mark told him that typing his name into Google delivered "alarming, false, misleading and injurious results" about him and the business. (Why Mark's friends and family were looking him up is not clear.)
Apparently, the text comes from some language from the California State Board of Accountance that is not even on their web site. Of course, Google says they can't help what their crawlers find and the CSBA says it's not on their web site and there's nothing they can do.
But the argument is interesting. If Google is "publishing" false and damaging information, based on the way they choose to present things, are they culpable? Mark's lawyers say yes in their attempt to certify a class.
I think it's hilarious. According the Associated Press, Mark's lawyer wants a court order to prevent Google from using PageRank. Huh? PageRank is just a part of Google's proprietary algorithm that calculates the "importance" of incoming links. The lawyer characterizes it as reformatting information obtained from accurate sources, resulting in changing of the context in which information is presented.
Good grief. Any search engine based on web crawling is going to take snippets from web sites and display it differently. Now, a lawyer says the search engine can be liable if the snippets are displayed improperly.
Hmm. Well I suppose if the snippets got pasted together in a certain way, one could make an argument. Google usually displays truncated information. If the part that got truncated was the word "not." As in "Brad Fallon was not convicted of bank robbery in 2001." If Google just displayed a listing that said the opposite whenever someone was search for information on Brad Fallon, I probably wouldn't like it either.
But a class action lawsuit to force Google to "stop using PageRank"? Please.
Why not just continue the manual tweaking where appropriate. Like in the case where another lawyer, my law school roommate, just politely asked Google to remove a cloaked porn page that had his entire name in the title tag. They did -- and no one had to get sued.
Of course, the reason they removed the offending listing was because the offending page was "spam" according to Google -- not because my friend didn't like the content. At Google, any content they crawl is ok to display -- as long as it doesn't violate their Terms of Service. But content that reads like libelous material isn't part of their TOS. Yet.
You're familiar with Ego Surfing, right? Typing your name into Google to see what Google says about you. But what if you don't like what Google says? Well this is America, so of course the answer is -- sue 'em! Frankly, I'm suprised it took this long.
Of course, we all know that Google isn't really "saying" anything about you when they deliver search results . . . right? Maybe not. Mark Maughn, a CPA in SoCal, just filed a lawsuit against Google (and AOL, TimeWarner, and Yahoo) for libel, based on what came up in the Google search results.
A year ago, friends of Mark told him that typing his name into Google delivered "alarming, false, misleading and injurious results" about him and the business. (Why Mark's friends and family were looking him up is not clear.)
By the way, typing your own name into Google is "ego surfing." Typing in your friends' names is something else -- depending on the context. Looking up your blind date is far different, for example, than searching about a potential boss or employee. But these days, all can be much fun. Also, all of these things are different than "google bombing," where non-competitive search results can be manipulated with links. For example, searching: "coolest guy in the world" brings up my blog in the #1 spot (ha), but I'm only #2 for "coolest guy on the planet," currently held by Snoop Dogg.Anyway, according to Mark's proposed class action lawsuit filed in L.A., Google's "search results falsely represent that plaintiffs Maughan and/or Brown & Maughan have been disciplined for gross negligence, for failing to timely submit a client's claim for refund of overpayment of taxes, and for practicing as a CPA without a permit."
Apparently, the text comes from some language from the California State Board of Accountance that is not even on their web site. Of course, Google says they can't help what their crawlers find and the CSBA says it's not on their web site and there's nothing they can do.
But the argument is interesting. If Google is "publishing" false and damaging information, based on the way they choose to present things, are they culpable? Mark's lawyers say yes in their attempt to certify a class.
I think it's hilarious. According the Associated Press, Mark's lawyer wants a court order to prevent Google from using PageRank. Huh? PageRank is just a part of Google's proprietary algorithm that calculates the "importance" of incoming links. The lawyer characterizes it as reformatting information obtained from accurate sources, resulting in changing of the context in which information is presented.
Good grief. Any search engine based on web crawling is going to take snippets from web sites and display it differently. Now, a lawyer says the search engine can be liable if the snippets are displayed improperly.
Hmm. Well I suppose if the snippets got pasted together in a certain way, one could make an argument. Google usually displays truncated information. If the part that got truncated was the word "not." As in "Brad Fallon was not convicted of bank robbery in 2001." If Google just displayed a listing that said the opposite whenever someone was search for information on Brad Fallon, I probably wouldn't like it either.
But a class action lawsuit to force Google to "stop using PageRank"? Please.
Why not just continue the manual tweaking where appropriate. Like in the case where another lawyer, my law school roommate, just politely asked Google to remove a cloaked porn page that had his entire name in the title tag. They did -- and no one had to get sued.
Of course, the reason they removed the offending listing was because the offending page was "spam" according to Google -- not because my friend didn't like the content. At Google, any content they crawl is ok to display -- as long as it doesn't violate their Terms of Service. But content that reads like libelous material isn't part of their TOS. Yet.
