Webhost Sues Google

TheOcho writes "Webhost company AIT has decided to file a class action lawsuit against the internet giant Google. According to the article the dispute is over click fraud. AIT claims they have lost around $500,000 due to fraudulent clicks. They claim that Google is hitting their website from 'the same IP addresses'."

Comments

Right off the bat...

[Cherita Chen]

I can already see a major problem that AIT will have in actually winning this case. What about traffic that has been proxied? At one point or another, most network/systems administrators, when reviewing their log files, have wondered why they are seeing so much traffic from the same IP address located in "Reston, VA". This is of course the location of America Online's proxy servers.

Is it just me, or does their case seem a little weak?

For more info on the AOL proxy phenomenon http://webmaster.info.aol.com/proxyinfo.html

Re:Right off the bat...

[jander]

A weak case has never stopped Clarence Briggs before. If you look up "Litigious Bastard" in the dictionary, you will find his name.

I used to work for this Asshole when it was first started, and when I quit, I was served with an injunction preventing me to go to work for my new employer, two days after christmas. It didn't matter that NC is a right to work state, and that the company I was going to work for was a consulting company that had NOTHING to do with web hosting - He was just pissed that I had the audacity to leave my low-pay, high stress job for something better. And, from my observations while working there and from what I have heard from people afterwards; unless you leave the company on his terms and with his blessings, you can expect to get sued. BTW - even though the injunction was immediately thrown out when it was heard by a judge, It ended up costing me about 10 grand in lost pay, and legal fees

Which was why, I assume, one of the first things he did when he went "corporate" was NOT to pay the people who got him that far any better, but instead directly hire a lawyer to his staff...

It's my opinion that Clarence Briggs is the Darl McBride of the Web Hosting industry - in fact, when the whole SCO vs IBM litigation was started, I almost had to wonder if Darl wasn't being advised by CB.

To tie this into the parent - It wouldn't occur to them that a large majority might be from proxies... You would have to be experienced enough/smart enough to infer this, And most people that I know who meet these requirements are also smart enough to stay away from AIT. Besides, when has the facts ever been relevant to people like Briggs and McBride

I won't go into how his entire web hosting business is built off of free software...

I wouldn't be suprised if he tried suing me again, just for posting this, - and yes, he has/had little butt warts who's only job (as far as I knew) was to google his name/troll newsgroups for bad press about him or AIT, then spread FUD/Sue/or attempt to discredit the poster.)

btw, this is all my opinion and protected by the first amendment, so FOAD Briggs

They do have a point

[u2boy_nl]

"My question to them is simple," Briggs said. "Don't you think you have a right to see which IP addresses you were charged for?"

Well they do have a point.
Google has this data, why not make it available?

If i were an advertiser I would want to be able to to verify that the bills Google sends me are indeed correct. Right now it seems that advertisers have no way of doing that?

But I can see why Google is reluctant, providing this data incurs more costs, and I can imagine that there will be a lot of advertisers who are going to argue with them about their bills.

Something like this happened to me once

[Giometrix]

...Albiet on a much, much smaller scale. A bot (seemingly) made a huge amount of click-throughs within an hour (whether this was malicious or not, I have no clue), about 100x more click-throughs than normal. When I pointed this out to Google's customer support, I was shot back an email which in effect said, "We have safe-guards in place, those clicks are real." I was pretty bummed that the "do no evil" company would fire off an email like that, without at least investigating. Luckily, when I requested that they take a closer look, and that they compare what happened within that hour with my normal traffic, they agreed to investigate. In the end, I was never charged.

Google DID the right thing for me; but I really was at the mercy of Google. I really can't see why a paying customer shouldn't be seeing exactly what he's being charged for.

Waste of Taxpayers' Money...

[Chaffar]

Probability that this is a waste of taxpayer's money:

- The page has a a commercial for AIT Inc.'s "Voice, Training, and Data Services for the Office: + 20%.

- The article about AIT suing Google is immediately followed by another one promoting AIT new storefront launch in Chicago. + 35%

- Firefox says that 2 Pop-ups were blocked. I shudder to think of the content of these pop-ups: + 15 %.

-"It's wrong, and stealing and lying are wrong," AIT President Clarence Briggs said. "Somebody needs to do something about it." OMG Somebody think of the children! : + 20 %.

- The article is carried by The Fayetteville (NC) Observer. Any search on Google for AIT, Google, and lawsuit yield nothing: + 40%.

- Interestingly, though, searching for the same keywords on Yahoo does yield a few hits. : - 10 %.

Yep, this is definitely a publicity stunt by a random company trying to capitalize on Google's high profile. The numbers don't lie :)

My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently had a problem with Google as well. As an owner of a (very) small business, I had been running a small, focused ad campaign using Google's AdWords. One day while browsing through the daily charges on my AdWords account, I noticed a dramatic spike for just one day. Looking deeper, the spike consisted of clicks on just one of my target keywords.

I looked at my website's logs for that day and found over 50 instances of a request for "HEAD / HTTP/1.0" from a single IP address. What made this even more suspicious was the fact that they were all made with "Wget/1.10", and that IP never requested any other page from my site, not even the image/CSS files used on the main page.

I contacted Google's AdWord support, documenting all of the above in great detail and saying that these seem like fraudulent clicks. I got back a canned response "We're looking into it". Two weeks go by, nothing happens. I contact them again, asking for a progress update. I get back a response "Your case will be investigated within the next week". I wait 1.5 weeks, contact them again, ask what the hell is taking them so long.

I get back another response, again promising swift resolution. Couple of days later, I get an email from an Indian employee of Google saying that they have not detected any fraudulent clicks. I ask for a breakdown of charges per IP address for the day to check their data, but they say they can not provide those.

I tell them very well, I have no choice but to shut down all of my Google advertising.

Personally, I wouldn't trust Google's AdWords at all. I'm sure it makes money for some advertisers, but expecting Google to side on the side of advertisers in disputes is overoptimistic. They lose money on that, and as the case is that all the evidence is in their possession, and they refuse to show it to outsiders, how the hell are you supposed to prove that clicks are fraudulent if Google disagrees with you, as they seem to do in even obvious cases?

AIT .... sounds familiar

[CrazyJ020]

AIT is very very bad. I colocated in their datacenter for about a year, paying $100/month for a verbal agreement of 100 GB bandwidth. There was absolutely no paper record of the 100 GB limit and not verbal record of what charges would apply if I went over. My paper contract with them had explicity voided out the section regarding charges for excessive bandwidth.

One month I received a bill for $6000 citing "excessive" bandwidth. I had used approximately 200 GB of bandwidth, about double my allotted. I called and they assured me it would be fixed. Then the next months bill was $10,000. Their billing system continued to try to draft my credit card.

I finally had to take them to court over the disputed charges. They "waived" the $16,000 right before we entered the courtroom. The eventual settlement came to around $600. These guys are crooks.

http://www.webhostingratings.com/plans/AIT-Reviews .html

"AIT is flat out terrible and possibly the worst service out there."

"I have horror stories about AIT on which I could dwell for hours, but let's just say that AIT's attitude no matter what happens is "punish the customer." They feel free to mess with your stuff whenever they feel like it, change your deal on a whim, and generally suck! Big-time weasels! We are planning a big crew party for after we blow them up; we'll call it "Operation AIT Freedom!"

"When I moved, AIT continued to bill me for "service" on an account that was closed. When I wouldn't pay, they ruined my credit. I could not even talk to credit manager about it. Bad guys!"

""Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau due to one or more unanswered complaints.""

"They've stolen $900 from me by disk over-usage and fraudulent billing practices."

"AIT systematically stole money from us for months."

These are all from different customers. This company has consistently and systematically screwed their customers.