Scurramunga - 5:18 am on Jul 7, 2006 (gmt 0)

I know some people are going with the consideration argument, but even if accurate, that consideration is just so you can be crawled and potentially guaranteed to be in the index. No way you can prove your consideration in potentially lessening your copyright in regards to google entitles you to top rankings... So you can't really argue that road to any kind of fruitful end.

I disagree with the argument that webmasters provide legal 'consideration' to Google. Consideration is akin to the old phrase 'my end' or 'your end of the bargin' Just because we are allowing small snippits of info from our site to be listed on Google, it doesn't actually consitute payment (or consideration) for services rendered by Google. I would be more of the opinion that this probably be a totally unrealated issue regarding 'fair use'

In any case I am of the opinion that if it was deemed by a court that we do relax our our 'copyrights' to allow Google in, it is in the hope of being spidered and ranked, not as a condition that binds Google into a contract with us.

Even if you were to accept the contractual argument who gets to sue Google next? Firstly, is it a site owner like kinder.com who believes that their enjoyment of a top ranking position should be maintained for all eternity? Maybe, Google should be sued by the multitude website owners who rank badly but believe that they have been also entered into a contract and received the bad end of the deal because their sites actually deserve to be in #1 position.