Google Breaks Rules: Says its expanded list of Lawsuits

by Prejushya Kalicharan - 11/2/2012 6504 Views

Companies are keen in Clouding Google and its Progress for many Reasons

Rosetta Stone Inc. VS Google

The most recent one among the companies which feel Google’s money-spinning Adwords policy as a double-crosser is Rosetta Stone Inc. (Language-software maker). Back in 2009, Rosetta Stone filed trademark infringement lawsuit against Google for selling its trademarks to third-party advertisers for use as search keywords. Rosetta Stone claimed that because of this, users searching for its products in Google were in turn redirected to their competitor sites, as the competitors had purchased Rosetta’s sponsored link ads from Google. Though this case got dismissed in 2010, the case got lifted on appeal in April this year and got settled on confidential terms. Possibly a favorable case for Google as usual and Google has played its part very well here too!

Bloomberg reports –

“Google and Rosetta Stone have agreed to dismiss the three-year-old trademark infringement lawsuit between them and to meaningfully collaborate to combat online ads for counterfeit goods and prevent the misuse and abuse of trademarks on the Internet,” the companies said in a joint e-mailed statement.”

France VS Google

Relation between France and Google was not smooth in recent years. The strain started getting its routes in December 2009, when Google planned to digitalize all out-of-copyright books held by French libraries. President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his refusal saying, “We won’t let ourselves be stripped of our heritage for the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is.” Then was France’s decision to tax major search engines of about 2 per cent on their advertising revenues generated in France. Followed by the raids at Google offices in Paris and Eric Schmidt’s efforts to settle the dispute between Google and French newspapers, the weekly newspaper Le Canard Enchaine reported that the French Tax Administration has sent a billion euro tax claim against Google.

The report read –

“If the negotiations between Google and the media publishers don't result in a deal by the end of the year, Google already knows what awaits it from a tax point of view: one billion”

However Google denied the receivable completely. Google also threatens that rather complying with the law it would rather simply omit indexing European news sites from search. That would end up a disaster as a whole! And that simply would be the best ever news Bing and Yahoo wishes to hear. Google, why not obey the law when you have generated between 1.25 billion and 1.4 billion euros of revenue from France last year, and all you have settled as tax is just a little more than 5 million euros.

FTC VS Google

A US Federal Trade Commission authority has approached the government to sue Google for blocking competitors’ access to essential technology patents. A majority of undisclosed FTC commissioners are in favor of a lawsuit being filed against Google. These alleged anti-trust violations on Google and investigation procedures started last June considering complaints received from Microsoft and Apple. Theses competitors of Google say that Google plays a huge role utilizing its search area prominence and Motorola Mobility influence in blocking imports of their products into US.

Niki Fenwick of Google responded –

“We take our commitments to license on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms very seriously and are happy to answer any questions.”

Is a duel with Google a bad idea? (OR) All these are a melodrama by Google’s competitors to disgrace the brand’s credibility? What do you think?

Category :

Google

Tags :

Google Lawsuits, Rosetta Stone, French Tax Administration, Federal Trade Commission, anti-trust viol

About Prejushya Kalicharan

SEO is a challenging field and I try my best to surpass this challenging environment which is unconditionally filled with opportunities, knowledge building and problem solving. I pursue what I .... more info about the author