It was bound to happen, a large website, unhappy with the way they were penalized by Google has taken the matter to court. Parental advice site KinderStart has sued Google charging “it unfairly deprived the company of customers by downgrading its search-result ranking without reason or warning”.
Reuters Article

It will be interesting to see if a company can be held financially liable for deciding not to promote another company. Granted the reasons that it does so may seem unfair to the slighted company, but is that grounds for a lawsuit when the promoting company is doing nothing in the way of actually hurting the company except for the lack of promotion.

If KinderStart wins does that mean that if I choose not do promote a directory in the directory list on my website, that some slighted directory owner my feel that I owe him compensation due this over site? Or do I have the right to set my own rules and standards as to whom I choose to include. And does the fact that other sites (in the case of this lawsuit, MSN and Yahoo) rank a site highly mean that everyone else is obligated to follow suit.

I guessing that this will not be the only time Google will have to face this challenge, especially if KinderStart wins. I’m also guessing that once again the only real winner will be the lawyers.