Google Agrees to Pay $90mln on Click Fraud Lawsuit

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."

Comments

Wired had a nice piece a few months ago on this

[Hulkster]

The January/2006 Wired had an article titled "How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet" that presented a case study of a charter-jet service victimized by this ... turns out it was their competition doing it to use up their on-line marketing budget. Google Girl basically stonewalled 'em.

Tip of the iceberg

[jimmyhat3939]

My guess is this is just the tip of the iceberg. It's a smart move for Google to try and resolve this stuff once and for all, but I doubt strongly this and related issues are likely to go away anytime soon.

Reasons why I'm concerned about Google's business:

• The fact that it's basically impossible to ascertain how prevalent click-fraud is.
• The fact that many many people accidentally click on ads. Don't believe me? Try clicking *anywhere* on the blue ad box that shows up over results. Notice that a click even way on the right of it counts.
• Many businesses are still in a 'honeymoon' with Google and aren't yet seriously computing the performance of their clicks (how many clicks turn into sales).
• Do you seriously believe Google can keep getting $0.11 of revenue per search done on the site? Don't believe the statistic? Read the SEC filings and compute it yourself.

Cue Google-fanatic flamewar.