Company Sues Google Suggest, May We Suggest An Alternative?
from the another-one dept
As Google has grown it's obviously become quite the lawsuit magnet. Some have sued it for not ranking them high enough in their index, while others have complained that Google links to illicit content, like child porn. In the latter case, the law's clear that Google is not responsible for others' content. But now a company is suing Google over their Google Suggest service, which offers search suggestions as the user types. They're not complaining, as one might have guessed, that Google isn't suggesting the company name, but rather that suggestions with the company name add words like crack and serials, which then point to tools that help hack the company's products. Google's likely defense, that the service just uses a neutral algorithm that reflects what people are searching for, might run into trouble since they do actively edit some suggestions (porn related ones, for example). Also, given the tech sophistication of some judges and juries, they might have a hard time explaining how a service called Google Suggest isn't really suggesting that people hack the company's software. It seems like this problem could be resolved, simply by adding some well-known hacker keywords to the banned list. This might impair some legitimate searches, but probably wouldn't cause too much damage to the largely experimental project. Now why, again, is a lawsuit the best way to solve this problem?
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Now why, again, is a lawsuit the best way to solve
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Same with the populist attack on "trial lawyers" as a way to reign in large jury awards.
Lawyers don't award the money -- a jury of your peers makes the award. Attacks on lawyers usually come from companies who want to set a ceiling on their risk from injuries stemming from their produts -- or politicians trying to take power back from the people and the courts and placing it in the hands of their biggest campaign contributors.
Malpractice death in Texas now has a $250K jury award limit. If I'm an insurance coverage looking at $300K in expenses to treat a burn patient -- I can now save $50K by letting the patient die. Nice.
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A legal defense can easily run into 6 figures just to get to trial, let alone try a case in court. The company can pony up $100K in legal fees just to gamble on a summary dismissal in preliminaries versus $50K to settle out of court. Which action do you think the bean counter is going to recommend when his neck is on the block thanks to Sarbanes Oxley?
I agree that we need a fair means of metering out justice when real wrongs have occurred. We also need to figure a way to weed out the nuisance lawsuits before they bankrupt our system of justice, both literally and figuratively. I think a reasonable way to do that is to take action against the lawyers who repeatedly file nuisance lawsuits.
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** Awards for loss of income and medical expenses are not capped. The $750,000 cap cannot be appealed to the courts.
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Now why, again, is a lawsuit the best way to solve
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Why?
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Now why, again, is a lawsuit the best way to solve
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lawyers should be held liable
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New Service from Google
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Whatever happened to quietly pointing out a potential issue {not really a flaw} before slandering someone for poor workmanship?
That's what this lawsuit is. It's Slander and an opportunistic lawyer or individual trying to make a quick buck even though Google suggest is still in Beta. And before you say anything, I know "Beta" is not a free pass to remove all responsibility as so many apps stay in Beta, but let's get real.
If someone types in for example Adobe then hits enter, won't that bring up a greater number of Adobe software hacks and cracks and serials and better yet alternatives, than Google suggest will provide?
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Pointless
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Did they Contact Google First?
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Is it possible that some plaintiffs attempted to communicate with Google about the problem - BEFORE initiating costly lawsuits?
But what would be the likely scenario of the average firm attempting to get Google to modify its ALGOs?
Perhaps, an Amazon of an EBAY might have a ghost of a chance in getting the brief attention of the Chief Engineers, but can ANYONE else be affective?
The lawsuit may COMPELL, Google to respond. As opposed to leaving it up to ethics.
Everyone firm to be proactive about surviving and looking out for its interests.
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America
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Part two is coming out soon...
Perhaps "serials" is meant to describe the series of software made by the company (e.g. Software 1.0, Software 2.0, etc.).
And "cracks" is meant to make consumers aware of vulnerabilities in the software.
I'm not saying that's the case. (I realize it isn't.) I'm just saying that it's *possible*.
If the software company really has that much of a problem with it, they should just pay more for the keywords "crack" and "serial." That way, when someone takes the suggestion, they get a link to the company's site - as opposed to a "crack" or "serial" site.
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Ever hear of class-action?
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Law Suit
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Banned Word List Impractical
Or what if I'm a history enthusiast doing a research project on the Enigma cypher machines, and I search for "crack the Enigma code"?
Google isn't going to cripple that feature by doing that.
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art&crafts
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