Macro - 2:30 pm on Sep 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

I think a case of negligence would be hard to bring against Google without the existence of a contract of some sort

Get a clever lawyer and he'll find a case in anything. It is obviously not the case that you need to have a contract with someone before bringing suit. That would bring criminal justice to a complete standstill. How many burglars, murderers or fraudsters get their victims to sign contracts first? ;)

Seriously, just because you're claiming "negligence" does not make a contract mandatory. I can think of numerous recent examples of successful action where there was no contract in place.

Google doesn't owe any of us a living, Google does not owe any of us traffic or ranking. Should they choose to remove us from their listings that is entirely their prerogative. And you can't sue them for that. However, as with any responsible business G will appreciate that they don't need to intentially commit a breach of the law to be named as party in a copyright infringement or in a "collusion" accusation. But I don't see that as the quickest or best route to a resolution.

On a related matter, when "criminal" was mentioned earlier on in the thread it referred to siteowners' deliberate expoitation of this Google flaw and not to Google's activities themselves.