How I took on Google and won!

One of the Goliath’s of the digital universe, Google pioneered a whole new business model. Instead of getting users to subscribe to their services and pay with money, Google created a new currency—data. Users pay Google by leaving their dataand metadata behind, which Google then contracts out to advertisers who make a fortune out of it. The services Google offers are just lures. Once you take the bait, they’ve got your data and use it to grow their empire.

As the gatekeeper to your data, Google knows more about you than you may think.In 2010, Google’s former CEO, Eric Schmidt, said,“we don’t need you to type at all. Because we know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less guess what you’re thinking about.”[1]

But with its own agenda and aggressive protectionism, Google isn’t afraid to go after anyone who follows their example in trying to turn data into revenue—especially if it threatens to affect their revenue streams.

Ask me. I came up against Google and won! Well, at least I think I did.

Unfair competition and tortious interference

In 2014, my company, E-Ventures, owned 366websites marketingSEO services that help users increase search visibility. The problem was that we use SEO to help users improve their PageRank on Google’s unpaid search listings instead ofpaying for Google AdWords—Google’s primary source of ad revenue—to achieve the same result.

Well, instead of our falling foul of Google’s algorithms or webmaster guidelines, Google received an anonymous tip from one of our competitors and decided to take radical action. We were notified that all of our websites had been identified as “pure spam” and would be removed from Google search results, with no opportunity for review or redress. And that’s precisely what they did. They delisted all of our URLs,and all of the new submissions we made were rejected by Google.

It appeared as though I waspersonally targeted by Google. I  would purchase a brand new domain, post nothing more than “Bye-bye world,” and within minutes Google would de-index it, so it had nothing to do with the content. It was a case of Google vs. Jeev.

As you can imagine, we lost a lot of our clients and revenue overnight, causing irreparable damage to the company.

So. In November 2014, we took Google to courtfor unfair competition and tortious interference.

Changing the rules and upping the game

Initially, our lawyers didn’t hold out much hope. Up until that time, courts in the US had consistently upheld that—under the First Amendment of the US Constitution—search engine ownerslike Google had total discretion over their ranking algorithms and how they chose to police and enforce their web page content policies. It was a legal defense used repeatedly and successfully against companies that sued Google for financial losses following changes to their ranking algorithms or SEO-related policies.

So we tried something different. Instead of basing our claim on PageRank—which other companies had unsuccessfully done—we claimed that Google delisted our sites for capricious, anti-competitive reasons because it impacted their AdWords revenue stream. As far as we were concerned, that contravened Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” We also argued that their actions were inconsistent with Google’s removal policies and that their“public statements about [their] removal policies were false, deceptive, and misleading.”

My lawyer, Alexis Arena, submitted in her brief that, “under Google’s definition, any website owner that attempts to cause its website to rank higher, in any manner, could be guilty of ‘pure spam’ and blocked from Google’s search results, without explanation or redress.But, if Google bans 366 websites from all search results because they are affiliated with a particular person or company, then that is a very different thing than anything the courts have addressed previously.”

After we filed suit, Google relisted our sites, probably hoping that would be the end of the story.

But it wasn’t.

Getting Google in a tizz

We didn’t withdraw the suit, determined to press ahead and make sure we weren’t the victim of Google’s protectionist policies in the future. We also hoped to recover some of our losses and create a precedent that would help other SEO companies.

Google’s submitted a motion to dismiss the suit, accusing us of “search engine manipulation” and stating that they removed our sites because “bad behavior” had to be deterred. Their lawyersargued that 47 U.S.C. 230(c)(2) of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 protected Google from liability for delisting our sites and preventing them from appearing in Google search results.But our complaint alleged Google delisted our sites in bad faith, taking it outside the realm of 230 protection. The federal judge in Florida dismissed their application, siding with us on almost every front and ruling that Google must answer the complaint—a radical departure from previous legal cases.

In his ruling, US District Judge John Steele, wrote “While a claim based upon Google’s PageRanks or order of websites on Google’s search results may be barred by the First Amendment, plaintiff has not based its claims on the PageRanks or order assigned to its websites. Rather, plaintiff is alleging that as a result of its pages being removed from Google’s search results, Google falsely stated that e-ventures’ websites failed to comply with Google’s policies. Google is in fact defending on the basis that e-ventures’ websites were removed due to e-ventures’ failure to comply with Google’s policies. The Court finds that this speech is capable of being proven true or false since one can determine whether e-ventures did in fact violate Google’s policies. This makes this case distinguishable from the PageRanks situation. Therefore, this case does not involve protected pure opinion speech, and the First Amendment does not bar the claims as pled in the Second Amended Complaint.”

We would have our day in court, and that in itself was a major victory. It was the first time Google would be required to defend SEO results, page rank, or delisting in court, challenging the precedent and opening the door for other companies to challenge the giant.By its very definition, Google’s definition of a “search engine manipulator” meant any SEO tactic—including those generally accepted—could be accused of manipulation. If they won the case, it would have far-reaching effects for anyone involved with SEO optimization.

The final act

We went back and forth over the next two years—winning, losing, and appealing—and finally, in February 2017, we lost.

The judge issued a summary judgment stating that “The presumption that editorial judgments, no matter the motive, are protected expression is too high a bar for e-ventures to overcome. Google’s actions in formulating rankings for its search engine and in determining whether certain websites are contrary to Google’s guidelines and thereby subject to removal are the same as decisions by a newspaper editor regarding which content to publish, which article belongs on the front page, and which article is unworthy of publication. The First Amendment protects these decisions, whether they are fair or unfair, or motivated by profit or altruism.”

So why do I say, “I took on Google and won”?

Well, maybe I did cross the line and violate Google’s guidelines with some of my sites, but certainly not with all of them. And Google’s spam police definitely overreacted. But if we hadn’t done anything, I might never have got my sites back and had the opportunity to correct things. Moreover, many other SEO companies might have been bullied into submission and suffered the same fate.

We took Google to court, got our case heard, and even if they won in the end, they’re a lot more circumspect as to how they go about things, hopefully making decisions based on website content instead of ownership. They’re also more transparent about what they consider to be “white hat” vs. “black hat” SEO, making it easier for me to promote my companies and my clients more effectively and efficiently.

For me, that’s a win. 

PS: If you want totrack what happened in the case, E-Ventures Worldwide, LLC v. Google LLC (2:14-cv-00646), you’ll find all the relevant info on Court Listener. You can also read about it in the books Free Speech in the Digital Age, edited by Susan J. Brison and Katharine Gelber, and The Perilous Public Square: Structural Threats to Free Expression Today, edited by David E. Pozen.

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.