Google got a mixed ruling in an antitrust case that...

back payments from price-comparison site MyTriggers for its AdWords campaigns, but MyTriggers fought back, claiming that Google’s decision to raise MyTriggers’ minimum bid prices for keywords constituted anticompetitive behavior. Franklin County (Ohio) Judge John Bessey turned back Google’s attempt under the immunity provisions of the Communications Decency Act to have MyTriggers’ counterclaims dismissed. Google said it has the right to make editorial decisions about which ads to pair with its search results under the “otherwise objectionable” language of the immunity provisions. Bessey said Google was stretching the language of the statute, which gives immunity to providers who block “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable” content. The cases Google relies on for its expansive reading of “otherwise objectionable” involved ads that claimed fraud by government officials and “atrocities” by the Chinese government, and also email providers blocking spam from reaching subscribers’ inboxes -- all of which are close enough to the “harassing” prong, Bessey said. Content blocked as “otherwise objectionable” must have some relation to the named categories in the immunity provision, he said. Google also cited cases dealing with immunity from being considered the publisher of third-party content, which isn’t at issue here, the judge said. Therefore the CDA doesn’t preempt MyTriggers’ claims under Ohio’s antitrust statute. But Bessey said MyTriggers didn’t allege that Google harmed competition broadly, only that it harmed MyTriggers: The comparison site itself alleges Google favored some competitors, including Shopping.com and PriceGrabber.com. MyTriggers’ claim that Google and its “search partners” put MyTriggers on a “blacklist” is too vague to stand, the judge said, and therefore he won’t consider whether Google’s “unilateral conduct” against MyTriggers is a violation of the act. MyTriggers failed to point to any contractual language that Google breached, and is apparently unaware of whether it had a contract with Google in the first place, Bessey said, noting that MyTriggers claimed Google violated a contract, “'if any.'” The comparison site’s other claims are too vague to remain, the judge said. Though it’s clear that MyTriggers “has gotten zero traction in court” -- all the more embarrassing because of the involvement of high-profile lawyers who have pursued antitrust claims against Google in the past -- the court’s narrow reading of “otherwise objectionable” is troubling, said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. Many other courts have not read such relational limits into the CDA, he said.