Search Engine Optimization Support Forums

If you have any interest in the SearchKing case, or in fact any interest in what Google's responsibilities to the web are, then you should read this lawmeme analysis of the latest legal documents in the case. It prompted me at least to do some more thinking, which of course I'll share with you! (click the "Read More" link).

I'm no US lawyer, but reading the lawmeme analysis I think they probably cover the legal aspect quite well - so I'm not really going to touch on that. I think a more critical point from the article is really the idea of the "court of public opinion".

So what really interests me in this case, right now at this moment in time is does PageRank really only represent Google's OPINION of a page.

PageRank is, put simply, a formula. And at it's most complex is a computer algorithm. Whilst it is clear that computers are capable of logical reasoning, they have not yet gained the ability to have an opinion. An opinion being a viewpoint, along with the recognition that an opinion is not entirely factually or logically derived. When I log on in the morning my computer doesn't think "it's that nice bloke Chris"! And Google would appear to agree with me because their very own toolbar states "PageRank is Google's measure of the importance of this page".

Opinions, are subjective. Measures, by definition are not. They are quantitative (you can have an opinion that "it is less than a pint of beer", but a "measure of a pint of beer" must be a pint).

If we delve in to Google's Technology page we can read about PageRank there. It apparently:

relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value.

So now, if we take Google's statement in the legal documents that PageRank is an "Opinion" to be true. Then the opinion of one entity (Google) is "uniquely democratic"? And if it is indeed their opinion, why mislead us with a statement that says it depends on the link structure of the web (a calculation - or measure if you like)? In fact, they go on to give us an overview of how it's calculated.

Everything on Google's web site implies that PageRank is a calculation, an algorithm and therefore cannot be a subjective opinion. So the question becomes, is the description "OPINION" in the legal documents a case of framing something to look favourable? Or is Google's site misleading us? The answer is to look at academic papers:

If I take a look at this abstract for "The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web" by Larry Page, Sergey Brin, R. Motwani, T. Winograd, it describes PageRank as a method for rating Web pages objectively and mechanically. To emphasise a word OBJECTIVELY, not subjectively as would be the cause with an opinion.

Pop across to The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page back in their university research days and we see a more telling statement (in section 2.1 of this shortened version):

These maps allow rapid calculation of a web page's "PageRank", an objective measure of its citation importance that corresponds well with people's subjective idea of importance

In this case not only are we told that PageRank is objective and not an opinion, but we are told that that objective measure relates to people's subjective idea of importance. A "subjective idea of importance" and can be rewritten as "people's opinion of importance". Not only does this say that PageRank IS NOT an OPINION, but it also says the opinion that it corresponds to in some way is that of PEOPLE AS A WHOLE and NOT solely Google.

It would appear to me that, from the very beginnings of Google, PageRank was intended to be an objective measure and not an opinion. It was sold as such in every research paper (none of the pages I checked even mentioned the word opinion). Then it is sold as an objective measure on Google's pages (again none even mentioned the word opinion). But now, with legal proceedings under way it becomes their "opinion" instead of an objective measure which relates to the collective opinion of everyone. That, I have to say is what most interests me about the legal wrangle between Search King and Google.

I said, when I first commented on this court case that even if Google would win then things would change for them. And I believe that this is it. For Google no longer represent the idealised statements in their research project or on their site. They are no longer making measurements or assessing the opinion of a whole. They are beginning to be about their opinions, them, what they think and this becomes the (whether legal or moral) argument for being able to do whatever they like. Court case or not, whether they win or not, that is worrying and something that must be fundamentally changed or they will go the same as Altavista.

If we get back to the legal issues, and I know little about US law or the case in question. But from what I read one defence Google uses is a case Jefferson County School Dist. No. R-I v. Moody's Investor's Setvices, Inc., 175 F.3d 848 (10th Cir. 1999). This I find interesting because I see a fundamental difference that may or may not have legal implications in the US. A rating agency, by definition gives subjective opinions. These opinions are based on some facts but they are known to include subjectivity and they are and have never been sold as anything but. The difference with Google is that from day one Google described PageRank as an objective measure, at the furthest stretch of the imagination they describe it as the opinion of the web as a whole, it is only when we come to the legal documents that it is described as their opinion. If we ignore the legal documents "opinion" definition because it has only arisen ANYWHERE at the last minute in those documents and was previously sold as the opposite, then the question in my mind is can you relate a rating agency that gives ratings with a known amount of subjectivity to a search engine who gives out ratings which they have always said are an objective measure?

Now if the number of Google's toolbar were to say "Rank" or "Importance", instead of "PageRank" then I can see that that could be subjective. But it doesn't.

------------------------------------------------

Added:

As I think some more about this, the question of whether Google's action was necessary to maintain the integrity of the database also flutters around my mind. The best way I can think to explain this is to use an analogy for PageRank.

Imagine I have my hand in the water at the edge of a huge lake. When I pull my hand out ripples are sent all the way across the huge lake. It happens that the ripples are bigger near my hand and indistinguishable at the edges, but ripples there are. I have damaged the integrity of the lake by making un-natural ripples. If I plunge my hand back in to the lake with the exact same force as I pulled it out then I make the same ripples with the same effect on the integrity of the lake. No matter whether I push my hand in or pull it out, the effect on the lake is the same; it is just the position of my hand that changes.

To use this analogy - the lake is the PageRank of all the pages on the web. PageRank flows in the same kind of fashion as our ripples. If somebody were to manipulate PageRank then those ripples would be created and the integrity of the PageRank system altered. However, to keep the integrity of the PageRank system we must negate the factor that caused the ripples and discount it. If we penalise then we are effectively plunging the hand back in the lake and causing the exact same ripples. The only situation where integrity is maintained is where PageRanks are set to their original values. In this situation the penalisation means only that SearchKing were under the water of our analogous lake and not above it. It is difficult to see that this is an act to prove integrity as Google themselves disturbed the integrity, more easy to see it as an act of punishment.