A company called KinderStart is suing Google for dropping it from the Google search list and thus giving KinderStart's traffic a 70% haircut. In essence, the charge is that Google has become an "essential facility" and thus its actions should be subject to government review for fairness.

Technology & Marketing Law Blog notes:

Personally, I find this lawsuit fascinating from a theoretical perspective. At its core, the lawsuit presumes that there is a single way Google should run its ranking algorithm, and Google should suffer penalties for any deviations. Intrinsically, this lawsuit is about diminishing Google's ability to run its algorithm as it sees fit (including mismanaging the algorithm).

This pro-regulatory argument is more common than we might think. Rep. Smith has effectively advanced such an argument in proposing the Global Online Freedom Act to regulate ranking algorithms. And plenty of academics have jumped on the pro-regulatory bandwagon. The seminal pro-regulation article is by Introna and Nissenbaum, but they are hardly alone. Just recently, Frank Pasquale has posted a work-in-progress, "Rankings, Reductionism, and Responsibility," arguing for various controls over ranking algorithm decisions.

Now, some might suggest that the same arguments used by Google to promote net neutrality can be picked up by KinderStart to support its law suit, and that Google cannot effectively argue simultaneously that it must be free and everyone else must be regulated. Luckily. we at PFF are much too kind-hearted to engage in such schadenfreude.