Google PageRank Lawsuit Dismissed a Second Time

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The San Jose Mercury News this afternoon reports that a US district judge in San Jose has dismissed a case against Google originally filed in March 2006, that alleged its page rankings that pertain to relative placement in search results unfairly rated a particular provider of parenting information lower than other sites in the same category.
This is the second time the case has been dismissed, although Judge Jeremy Fogel has given plaintiff Kinderstart another opportunity to amend and re-file its case yet again.
The original case alleged that Kinderstart had been "blacklisted" by Google, for reasons which attorney Gregory Yu said at the time may have been due to anti-competitive behavior. In its defense, Google argued that its decisions about which sites to place first in its PageRank system could very well be subjective, and Google would have the right as an editorial service provider for it to be so.
In its first May 2006 motion to dismiss, Google's attorneys wrote, "Defendant Google, like every other search engine operator, has made that determination for its users, exercising its judgment and expressing its opinion about the relative significance of websites in a manner that has made it the search engine of choice for millions.