Google Sued Over Click Fraud

tanveer1979 writes "A seller of online marketing tools has sued Google over click fraud, accusing it of failing to protect clients from spurious clicks over web ads. The suit claims damages of $5 million and is seeking class action status. Sites get money per click from the advertisers. Rival companies of the advertiser may employ people to repeatedly click on the advertisers link on Google costing them large amount of money. Google denied the allegations. From the article: 'We believe the suit is without merit and we will defend ourselves against it vigorously.'" Interesting turnaround.

Comments

I'm confused...

[AnObfuscator]

ok, so based on the second link to the previous slashdot story (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/19/1 927212&tid=123), doesn't that prove in Google's favor that Google *is* taking click fraud seriously? Thus, doesn't that conclusively demonstrate in Google's favor that "Click Defense Inc." is just wrong?

And their main product is to prevent, you guessed it, Click Fraud. Hmmmm, a few minutes ago I didn't know that such a product existed, but now that they've sued google, I do. double hmmmm hmmmm.

Some Executive somewhere: "Google is getting sued because they don't protect us from 'Click Fraud', whatever that is! that could cost us lots of money! What can I do to protect myself? Let me ask Google. Oh, look who is on the sponsored links, clickdefense.com. Oh, their product saves me! yay!"

I smell a large omnivorous rodent of the genus Rattus...

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

No, no, no ;-) TFA points out they are being sued by Click Defense Inc. They are not a customer or a client. They sell software designed to prevent click fraud!

Click Defense Inc's business plan:
1. Build software which may or may not prevent click fraud
2.Approach Google about using said software.
3.Google says no thanks.
4.Sue Google for not buying your product (I mean protecting customers)
5.???????
6.Profit!
7.???????
8.Burn in hell for being a scum sucking ass-clown

Re:Not much of a turnaround.

[bigman2003]

Let's say you are a company. And you hire someone to do marketing- maybe hand out expensive brochures and free samples.

Well, your competitor keeps going back to the booth and taking your brochure and free samples. Then he throws them away, and goes back for more.

Do you sue the person you hired to work at the booth?

No...you figure out a better way to do it...or you fire the person at the booth and hire a big beefy guy who will make sure it is '1 per customer.' (Yet, he scares away all of the customers)

You know the business model going in...how can you sue?

TOS problems

[frostman]

I'm not convinced Google is trying as hard as it should to combat click fraud, and I know how awful their customer service is, but...

When you sign up for AdSense or AdWords, you do agree to their terms of service, including things like (paraphrasing here):

• They pay you whatever they think is fair.
• If they suspect fraud, they do whatever they like (including not paying you); if you suspect fraud, they'll "work with you" to investigate it.
• On AdWords, you pay for whatever clicks they say you got.
• On AdSense, they pay you for whatever clicks they say you got.
• On AdSense, they can advertise their products on your site as much as they want, for free.
• Their records are authoratitive (though largely secret), yours are corruptible (though possibly interesting).
• Evil/fraud is what Sergey says is evil/fraud.
• All your base yada yada...

Seriously, Google ads have some great advantages on both sides, but if you go down that path you should not bet more money than you can easily afford to lose. You've basically agreed up front that they're always right - and yeah, maybe you can challenge that in court, but don't forget they have twenty lawyers for every click-fraud investigator. :-)

Re:It's a funny old world, innit

[kebes]

I think the company in question, ClickDefense must not be doing very well, and is using this as a last-resort money-grab to stay alive (wild speculation, I know!). Why do I say this? Well, it seems like corporate suicide for a company to admit that their product doesn't work at all. They are a company that sells click-fraud detection tools, so that other companies can prevent click-fraud and thereby increase their return-on-investment for all those advertising dollars.

But if their product works properly, then they should be properly protected, and they wouldn't need to complain to Google that they are getting ripped off. They would just use this technology on themselves, and figure out a way to prevent this fraud (and then sell the technique to others of course). Part of this 'technique' might just be to accurately determine which advertising-supplier has the lowest fraud-rates, etc. But by telling google that they are getting frauded, they are basically admiting their system doesn't work.

Of course, they will claim that they are using their technology to detect the fraud occuring on google's ads... this is, after all, the very point of their product, right? Then other people will buy their product. But 'going public' in this way doesn't make sense. If google cleans up their act in a public and verifiable way, then ClickDefense's product becomes irrelevant. Basically companies won't buy their product/services, because they will be happy knowing that Google is taking care of the situation. They don't need to pay ClickDefense for special knowledge about click-fraud: ClickDefense appears to be making this information public!

If this is a publicity stunt, I think it is a bad one. Frankly it makes ClickDefense's product and services appear rather pointless. I question the long-term viability of this company!