E-Ventures Worldwide, LLC v. Google, Inc.

188 F. Supp. 3d 1265, 2016 WL 2758889, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 62855
CourtDistrict Court, M.D. Florida
DecidedMay 12, 2016
DocketCase No: 2:14-cv-646-FtM-29CM
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 188 F. Supp. 3d 1265 (E-Ventures Worldwide, LLC v. Google, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, M.D. Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
E-Ventures Worldwide, LLC v. Google, Inc., 188 F. Supp. 3d 1265, 2016 WL 2758889, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 62855 (M.D. Fla. 2016).

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER

JOHN E. STEELE, SENIOR UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

This matter comes before the Court on review of defendant Google’s Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs' Second Amended Complaint and Supporting Memorandum of Law (Doc. #78) filed on November 16, 2015. Plaintiff filed an Opposition to Google’s Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs Second Amended Complaint (Doc. #79) on November 30, 2015, to which Google filed a Reply Memorandum in Support of its Motion to Dismiss (Doc. #82) on December 14, 2015.

I.

Plaintiffs Second Amended Complaint alleges the following facts: Plaintiff e-ventures Worldwide, LLC is an online publishing and research firm that reviews products and services in specific industries. (Doc. #75, ¶ 9.) The majority of plaintiffs revenues are derived from the “search engine optimization” or “SEO” industry. (Id. ¶ 13.) Search engine optimization is the process of causing websites to be ranked and displayed more prominently in search results, without payment being made to the search engine. (Id.)

Defendant Google operates an Internet search engine and has been called “the world’s largest media company” with approximately 70% of the United States’ online search market and 90% of Europe’s online search market. (Id. ¶ 10.) The ma[1269]*1269jority of Google’s revenues are derived from its “AdWords” advertising program, through which consumers pay to have their websites ranked and prominently displayed in Google’s search results. (Id. ¶ 11.) Links to the advertisers’ websites are displayed at the top of Google’s search results and each time a consumer clicks on one of the advertisements, Google charges the advertiser and makes a profit. (Id. ¶ 12.) Due to Google’s large market share, SEO companies tend to focus on how their clients’ websites can obtain a higher ranking on Google’s unpaid search results. (Id. ¶ 14.)

Plaintiff alleges that the SEO services it provides and advertises on its website reduce Google’s' revenues because if companies are successful in achieving website prominence on Google’s unpaid search listing, then there is less of a desire for them to purchase Google’s AdWords advertising services. (Id. ¶ 15.) Accordingly, marketing dollars that may otherwise have been spent on Google advertising are spent by companies on SEO providers to increase their prominence on Google’s search results. (Id. ¶ 16.) Both Google and e-ventures publish information online to assist third parties in achieving increased website visibility on Google. (Id. ¶ 17.) Google hopes that third parties pay Google to be ranked higher in Google’s search results, and e-ventures hopes that third parties pay an SEO provider, instead of Google, to achieve the same result. (Id.) Plaintiff alleges that as a result, Google has an anti-competitive, economic motivation to eliminate the visibility of e-ventures’ websites on its search engine results. (Id. ¶ 18.)

Plaintiff further alleges that prior to September 2014, e-ventures had not made any significant or sudden changes to its website content that would have prompted Google to treat e-ventures’ websites differently than they had been treated in the past. (Id. ¶ 19.) E-ventures obtained information indicating that on or about September 15, 2014, a third party with a personal vendetta against e-ventures caused Google to receive false information regarding e-ventures’ websites. (Id. ¶ 20.) On September 19, 2014, e-ventures was notified by Google that 231 websites owned by e-ventures were being manually removed by Google from all of Google’s search results because they had been identified as “pure spam.” (Id. ¶ 21.) “Pure spam” is a term coined and defined by Google.1 “Pure Spam” is defined by Google as indicating that “Google has detected that some of your pages may be using techniques that are outside [Google’s] Webmaster Guidelines. The site appears to use aggressive spam techniques such as automatically generated gibberish, cloaking, scraping content from other websites, and/or other repeated or egregious violations of Goo-gle’s quality guidelines.” (Doc.’ #78-1, p. 14.) When Google detects pages that it deems as “Pure Spam,” it “applie[s] a manual spam action to the affected portion of [the] site.” (Id.) The 231 websites that were manually removed by Google includ[1270]*1270ed almost every website owned by e-ventures, including “corporate” websites, brand new websites, and websites that could not have engaged in any activities which could possibly be classified as spam. (Doc. #75, ¶23.) Over time, 365 websites of e-ventures’ websites were removed from Google’s search results. (Id. ¶ 57.)

As a result of Google’s removal of e-ventures’ websites, e-ventures’ websites could not be located on Google.com, the world’s most widely used search engine. •(Id. If 24.) Therefore, when an individual would search for e-ventures on Google, a display of third party websites for companies using the trademark ‘eventures’ would appear, but not e-ventures’ actual corporate website. (Id. ¶25.) As a result, e-ventures’ business partners and current and prospective business customers, were prevented from locating e-ventures’ websites through Google. (Id. ¶ 26.) During the ban, e-ventures attempted to have new websites listed in Google’s search results, and those websites were rejected based upon their affiliation with e-ventures. (Id. ¶ 27.) E-ventures’ websites were not only removed from Google.eom’s search results, but were also removed from all google-affiliated websites and from. third party websites participating in Google’s advertising program. (Id. ¶28.) Plaintiff alleges that Google’s ban of its websites caused it irreparable harm and significant damage to its business. (Id. ¶ 29.)

Following Google’s notification to e-ventures that its websites had been de-listed, e-ventures began researching possible bases for Google’s removal of its websites, without success. (Id. ¶ 30.) E-ventures alleges that it made every possible change to its websites , in order to get the websites re-listed, but they remained banned. (Id.) Google’s removal of its websites appeared to be because Google determined each website was affiliated with e-ventures. (Id. ¶ 31.) Many of the websites had nothing in common with each other, other than their relation to e-ventures. (Id.) E-ventures did not have knowledge of any specific problems that would cause Google to remove its websites. (Id. ¶ 32.)

Prior to filing suit, e-véntures attempted to address with Google the reasons for Google’s designation of its websites as “pure spam,” made significant changes to its websites, filed multiple resubmission requests, created new websites, and sent letters to Google from counsel, all to no avail. (Id. ¶33.) It was not until after plaintiff filed the underlying lawsuit that its websites were relisted on Google’s search results. (Id. ¶ 35.)

Google’s search results are largely the result of algorithms and Google alleges that it only removes content from its search .results in very limited circumstances. (Id. ¶36.) These limited circumstances are identified in Google’s published “Removal. Policies.” (Id.) Plaintiff alleges that nowhere in the Removal Policies does Google indicate that it will ban a website owner or take punitive action against a website owner by removing from its paid and unpaid search results' every website affiliated or associated with the website owner. (Id. ¶ 37.) The Removal Policies likewise do not indicate that Google will remove content for anti-competitive reasons. (Id.

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Bluebook (online)
188 F. Supp. 3d 1265, 2016 WL 2758889, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 62855, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/e-ventures-worldwide-llc-v-google-inc-flmd-2016.