Misguided CNET Article on Canadian Copyright Law and Caching/Archiving
CNET ran an odd article today entitled “In Canada: Cache a page, go to jail?” The article discusses some proposed changes to Canada’s copyright law that allegedly would make search engine archiving an infringement. It quotes a bunch of intelligent…
Search Engines and Privacy…AGAIN?!
News.com and the Associated Press both ran stories last week about the possible ways that Google aggregates user data in a way that theoretically threatens privacy. Hmm…this sounds familiar…haven’t we heard this story before? Yes, only about a thousand times….
Lane’s Gift Click Fraud Complaint
Lane’s Gifts and Collectibles LLC v. Yahoo! Inc., Case No. CV-2005-52-1 (Ark. Cir. Ct. complaint filed Feb. 17, 2005). After parsing the Click Defense complaint last week, I was finally able to get my hands on one of the complaints…
Click Fraud Lawsuit–Click Defense v. Google
Click Defense Inc. v. Google, Inc., No. 5:05-cv-02579-RMW (N.D. Cal. complaint filed June 24, 2005). This is the second major lawsuit again Google for click fraud, following on the Lane’s Gift case filed a few months ago. I have yet…
Mistaken Judgments for Content Labeled Advertising
Last week I applauded the FTC for arguing against the mandatory labeling of commerical emails. In that post, I argued that the labels would increase the rate of erroneous judgments by recipients, because the recipients would mistakenly believe that the…
AOL Advertises on Competitors to Get Traffic to AOL.com
To build traffic for AOL.com, AOL is buying search ads on Google and Yahoo. The article says: “AOL had initially considered spending as much as $50 million on television ads to promote the portal. But that changed after the company…
Update on Click Fraud Lawsuit
I’m a little late blogging this. It appears that the Lane’s Gift and Collectible lawsuit over click fraud is tied up in procedural limbo right now. The suit was filed in state court, the defendants moved the case to federal…
Google’s Spam Rating Guide
I previously posted how Google uses humans to QA search results. Henk van Ess has subsequently posted the training manual for people doing the QA. There’s nothing too shocking in the guide. Some of the techniques it specifically addresses include:…
Web Gambling Advertising Suit Against Search Engines Allowed to Proceed
By John Ottaviani Business Wire is reporting that Judge Richard Kramer of the San Francisco County Superior Court has denied a motion to dismiss certain of the allegations in a class action lawsuit filed last summer against Google, Yahoo! and…
Google’s Human Algorithm
Henk van Ess has been running a series of blog posts at Search Bistro about how Google uses international students to QA the relevancy of its search results. See, for example, his initial post including the advertising that Google ran…