My Very Own Search Engine Spam Page

By Eric Goldman I know that aggressive marketers develop what’s commonly referred to as “spam pages”–low-value-added web pages that are intended to be indexed by the search engines and receive a low amount of traffic. Even with a low amount…

Why I hope Google loses

By Mark McKenna The blogosphere is abuzz with discussion of the Authors Guild’s lawsuit against Google. See here, here, and here, in addition to Eric’s post here. UPDATE: this post collects the reaction of a number of commentators. I don’t…

My Comments on Google Print

By Eric Goldman I have been thinking a lot about Google Print, Google’s plan to scan in and index all of the books of some of the largest libraries in the world. This program has some obvious benefits to society;…

Lane’s Gifts Click Fraud Lawsuit Back to State Court

By Eric Goldman Quick update on the Lane’s Gifts class action lawsuit over click fraud. The Eighth Circuit refused to hear an appeal of the federal court determination that the lawsuit should be remanded back to state court, so the…

GEICO and Google Settle

By Eric Goldman Reuters reports that GEICO and Google have settled their lawsuit. This development isn’t particularly surprising given that the judge practically ordered them to settle. The terms of the settlement are confidential, so we can only speculate what…

Google Sued (Again!) for Overcharging Advertisers

CLRB Hanson Industries LLC v. Google, Inc., Case No. 1-05-CV-046409 (Cal. Superior Ct. complaint filed August 3, 2005). Advertisers, including radio personality Howard Stern, have filed a new class-action lawsuit against Google for overcharging in AdWords. This represents the third…

GEICO v. Google Opinion (Finally) Issued

Government Employees Insurance Co. v. Google, Inc., No. 1:04cv507 (E.D. Va. Aug. 8, 2005). Overview On December 15, 2004, Judge Brinkema made an oral ruling in this case and promised to produce a written opinion in “a brief amount of…

Search Tidbits from ABA Annual Meeting

At the ABA Annual Meeting, I was on a panel with Rose Hagan of Google and Allison McDade of Dell. A couple of tidbits from the presentations that caught my attention: 1) Rose said that Google has now been sued…

Keyword Disputes Presentation

Tomorrow I’m speaking at the ABA Annual Meeting about trademark law and keyword disputes. I’ve prepared slides discussing the latest state of the law regarding keyword-triggering of ads by both search engines and adware.

eBay, the Search Engine

Is eBay a search engine? Of course it is. eBay is acknowledging as much. As the NY Times reports, “In a conference call, Ms. Whitman also described the importance of improving eBay’s search capability, calling the service as much a…