Google: 1 Kinderstart: 0
Posted by jonathan at 4:36pm EST on 03/23/2007
As Kinderstart.com sued Google in July of 2006, they were fighting because Google set their PageRank to a zero which dramatically dropped off their search rankings. So the question and legal dilemma came up of whether it was wrongful of Google to do that to Kinderstart.com.
The judges ruled. Google’s algorithm ranking with PageRank has no legal binding of public service that Google has to support. Google has the right to delist and de-PageRank any site they want to for any reason they want.
What it all comes down to is that what Google provides to the public, Google Search and the other bajillion services and products, is free of charge. There is no warranty, there is no guarantee, there is no policy saying it will last forever. What Google offers to everyone is for free use and a … well, a nice gift. Google sends thousands upon thousands of hits per day to my sites … FOR FREE!
Sure I’ve done search engine optimization for my sites, but Google doesn’t have to list my sites. Google could completely ignore my sites for no reason and there’s nothing I could do about it (as MSN has already done to a few of my sites for reasons I’m still unaware of.)
And as a small update, Google does indeed have Kinderstart.com’s website in their index today with roughly 700 pages indexed. It does show a PageRank zero still, but they are indeed listed.
