Google gets relief in lawsuit filed by Kinderstart

A federal court judge has ruled in favor of the search engine giant Google in the case filed by Kinderstart.

This is an important decision for the company, as it would prevent similar lawsuits in the future. Search engine rankings are a complicated and controversial subject and a negative result could have resulted in major problems for companies like MSN, Yahoo! and of course Google.

Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose however gave Kinderstart leave to amend and resubmit its case. He said in his judgment: “The court concludes that Kinderstart has failed to allege any conduct on the part of Google that significantly threatens or harms competition.”

Kinderstart had sued the company saying that bad rankings given by the search company to them resulted in a 70 percent plunge in traffic to the site in 2005. This harmed their business badly. They had sought class-action status for its suit on behalf of other Web sites, which have suffered a similar fate.