Google Agrees to Pay $90mln on Click Fraud Lawsuit 132
Hitokiri writes "Google has agreed to pay up to $90 million to settle a class action lawsuit 'Lane's Gifts v. Google'. The settlement stems from a lawsuit filed by Lane's Gifts earlier this year in an Arkansas state court and is designed to settle all outstanding claims against Google for fraud committed using its pay-per-click ad system back to 2002Google has made a statement on their blog."
Wired had a nice piece a few months ago on this (Score:5, Interesting)
Tip of the iceberg (Score:5, Interesting)
Reasons why I'm concerned about Google's business:
Cue Google-fanatic flamewar.
Measuring Results (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there any reason why internet ads do not do this?
$90 million / number of adsense users = aiaiai (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:the going rate (Score:2, Interesting)
Great News (Score:2, Interesting)
Personaly i have seen hundreds if not thousands of tracking erros
For example a user clicked on our Ad 10 times in less then 5 seconds, and then another user clicked on it 5 times in less then 1 second.
Thank the lord for timestamps !
Google Obviously Has The Leverage (Score:3, Interesting)
For the finance folks out there wondering how we'll account for this, we can say that the attorneys' fees (which will be determined by the judge) will be charged as an expense, most likely in the first quarter, once the amount is determined. The credits will be recorded as a reduction to revenue in periods in which they are redeemed.
Anyone who is acting like Google isn't paying enough doesn't understand either economics or the american legal system (notice I didn't say justice system). They may understand the difference between right and wrong (and I don't think Google is right), but they fail to understand "the way things work in the real world."
Re:WTF is "click fraud"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:WTF is "click fraud"? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that Google is charging advertisers for adverts which were not seen (by humans).
I can understand that the advertiser feels cheated if Google charges advertisers for 1 million clicks on their adverts, but 999,000 of them were faked by a script and only 1000 times a human end-user clicked the advert.
The problem gets worse when companies are deliberately faking clicks to create huge advertising bills for their competitors, even though their adverts are not being viewed. Similarly angry customers could do this to 'get their own back' on a company that they feel has cheated them.
Google has a problem here and they need to fix it or people won't want to risk using their service to place adverts.
Re:the going rate (Score:2, Interesting)
Adsense users are getting the shaft... (Score:2, Interesting)
Not always click fraud (Score:2, Interesting)