Kinderstart vs Google lawsuit dismissed, and ranking on ranking

The Kinderstart vs Google search ranking lawsuit was dismissed, with a complete victory for Google. See Eric Goldman for legal commentary, Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineWatch.com.

This has set off another round of pedantic parsing and nitpicking over the marketing PR that Google issues about its algorithms. My take on it all is much shorter. Meaning no disrespect to anyone in particular, but attempting to convey the issue succinctly from my point of view:

Marketing PR does not fully explain algorithms - GET OVER IT!

If Google gave a halfway detailed overview of what it does, all non-geeks eyes would glaze over immediately. Yes, people don't understand it. Yes, Google's statements aren't that informative. Yes, explaining it is good. But Kinderstart's basic charge about unfair ranking in this case reminds me of nothing so much as the trivial argument: "The US Constitution's First Amendment says I have freedom of speech, and it doesn't say anything about except for libel or death threats or copyright infringement, so THE CONSTITUTION IS BEING VIOLATED".

And conversely, lawyers and free-speech activists spend a lot of time arguing about this, so why should Google's search results be any easier to explain to a non-specialist? How many people think copyright "fair use" means "I can copy it all and distribute it all as long as I don't charge for it"?

Right, Google's PR doesn't say that it penalizes the results for sites it considers web-spam gamers. Yeah, in theory, it should. But I really can't get worked up that it doesn't, especially when web-spam gamers are the ones doing the complaining.

Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)