Click Fraud Clocks Google: Eyeing the Impending Litigations Facing the Online Giant
The latest information on the first case is that Google should be notifying all advertisers that they can accept the settlement or reject it. If you do not reject it, you will have to accept whatever this ½ cent on the dollar settlement comes to.
If you’re like most people and you see a “refund” class action letter, you might not even open the envelope. If you do open it, the amount and the terms for the refund discourage you from even sending in the paperwork. This is what Google is really counting on. This is why a number of law firms from around the country have filed the third suit, Kinney vs. Lane’s. To give businesses, especially small businesses/advertisers, a shot at getting a reasonable refund.
Let me return to the second suit, AIT. Brian Kabateck, one of the lawyers involved in AIT and Kinney vs. Lane described how his interest in click fraud started. Kabateck had been looking into search engine marketing for his law firm. In the process of talking to search engine marketing experts, the subject of click fraud came up. One of the SEM firms mentioned that one of their clients was having a problem getting a refund.
In this case, it was a rehabilitation center. Its hard to believe that something that borders on a social service would have a click fraud problem, but it did. When the center tried to ask Google to correct the problem and/or get a refund, that’s when they were met with stone-cold silence.
After hearing this type of story from numerous businesses, a number of law firms got together and filed the suit in California Federal court, via Click Defense/AIT. AIT was asking the Federal court to give the suit class-action status when Google suddenly announced its settlement in Lane’s Gifts. To make maters worse, Google was then able to have the AIT action delayed because it had reached a settlement in Lane’s Gifts.
This issue won’t go away. Clarence Briggs, AIT’s Chief Executive, has gone to Congress and appears to have raised the interest of a number of members of Congress. Staff members of the Judiciary Committee have asked for additional information and he has been told he may be called to testify as a witness. The search engines have already been in the spotlight with Congressional hearing on issues like privacy and their relationship with the Chinese Government.
So as things stand right now you should, if you are an AdWords advertiser, be getting legal notification of the pending settlement.
Reader Comments.
I hope the Congressional hearings take place, and I want to see/hear
what the Google execs say when questions are put to them such as why
they didn’t understand the threat of click fraud when AdWords and
AdSense were launched. It isn’t as if click fraud was new; there were
ad fraud schemes dating back into the mid-1990’s. More to the point,
there is a body of knowledge known to all Internet protocol engineers
and architects regarding the ability to easily fake and manufacture
traffic sent in IP packets.
Our law firm spends over 100k per year at Google, and we DO NOT think the settlement is a good deal. We are opting out, and will likely sue Google on an individual basis. We are also investigating whether we want to also represent other advertisers who wish to opt out.
If your company has spent a substantial sum at Google.com (over USD $100k), we would like to speak with you if you are interested in suing Google. We take no fees until and if we win your case, or settle.
Please email me at seamless.com@gmail.com.
k
FuckedGoogle.com
I found and interesting blog about FuckedGoogle.com. It made me laugh out loud. Try the link below:
http://www.light-speed-web-graphics.com/fuckedgoogle/fuckedgoogle_review.htm
I have attempted to use adwords on several occasions and when it came to the bid section it would show the minimum accepted bid of lets say $0.01 so I would raise that amount to $0.03.
Google accepted my bid but within hours my keywords were inactive for a larger bid amount. They were increased to $0.05 a click so I went into each of them and again raised my bid to what they claimed was the accepted bid amount they wanted. The next day I would check out how my key words are doing only to find all my keywords again were inactive and now Google wanted a minimum bid of $0.25 a click to as much as $10 a click.
Isn’t this clearly a bait and switch fraud? Google first agrees to one price, then they change the price once you begin, and continue to raise your price right out of the market place by the majority of small business owners? Yet they keep your money for so called clicks where you can not find any clicks to your site?
Google needs to be sued big time, not a measly $90 Million either, but for $3+ Billion. They are like any other scam artist out here, if they make millions and only have to pay pennies on the dollar, do you really think that con artist is going to stop their scam. Why would they stop? It is to profitable for them to stop ripping people off.
I feel Google, Yahoo should all be prosecuted like a common person and their officers thrown in jail and all their assets seized with minimum fines of Billions will be the only way to stop them from ripping people off.
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