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.

wait...

[tiberiandusk]

wasn't there an article a while ago about how google was trying to stop this since they were losing a ton of money to fake clicks? i think every online advertising company in the world has been working on this problem for a long time. suing them won't fix the problem but it will get all those lawyers a lot of money.

Not google's fault

[Arthur B.]

They don't have to sued Google over this, but the people commiting click fraud... I mean, they sign a contract in which they agree to pay for each click, it's never mentionned that Google will ensure that all clicks are legits... I don't think they have the slightest chance to make a point in court. Now Google could prrobably provide protection, but they won't have to. Eventually, protection (unique clicks, time spent on site etc) will arise with competition on ad placement as a required service.

1-800

[Matt Clare]

I hope this company doesn't have a 1-800 number:

"Ma' Bell didn't tell all the callers that they could only dial our number if they were going to buy something".

Umm What more can Google do?

[cranos]

Im just trying to think what google could do beyond some of the obvious - Ignoring multiple clicks from same IP on same ad target.

Any system is going to involve an element of fraud if there are human beings involved.

Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[-brazil-]

I doubt they're telling anyone, since it would be easier for the fraudsters to circumvent the checks if they knew the exact method.

The obvious measure would be statistical analysis to see whether some IP addresses are generating an excessive amount of clicks, especially on the same ads.

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 [slashdot.org]), 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 [clickdefense.com] 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 [wikipedia.org]...

Re:Wrong defendant?

[cranos]

Follow the money. Google has the most money, therefore they are the best target to go for.

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 google's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't about getting money out of Google, this is about advertising their Click Defense service.

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?

Sneaky

[QMO]

IMO
This is a publicity stunt.
Click Defense is suing Google to get people to think about click fraud, so they'll buy software from Click Defense to save themselves.

IMHO

[Darth Maul]

In my humble opinion, any lawsuit that has the words "failing to protect" in its description is automatically bunk.

Hmmm.... if my advertising is costing me money...

[utmslave]

I change my advertising methods. If you bought a full page in the New York Times for advertisement and didn't see an increase in business that coincided with the amount you spent (assume that a rival company with deep pockets purchased about 100,000 subscriptions to the Times to inflate the ad placement cost), you would change your ad placement strategy. This is no different. If you want to sue someone, you need to sue the end-clicker that is causing the inflated ad cost or find another marketing plan.

.sigs cause cancer!

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:what exactly google does to stop fraud?

[Anonymous Coward]

My own experience is that (/me clicks Post Anonymously) they're doing more than basic checks.
We were proxy-clicking quite a bit, ending up with checks of roughly $2k per month.
We did everything we could to keep a steady growth-rate (eg. only slightly-higher click-through ratio per day or week), traffic increased at the same rate as the click-through ratio, never used the same proxy twice, changed our browsing-habbits (eg. spend different amount of time on a page depending on the type of ad etc).

They busted us after roughly 6 months.

-jurgen langeschnapp

Re:It's a funny old world, innit

[kebes]

I think the company in question, ClickDefense [clickdefense.com] 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!

I tried to give them some solutions

[tod_miller]

But they didn't seem to want to rock the boat of their solution.

I once asked them, if I click 5 times on an ad, does that get charged 5 times? They said they couldn't say. All they have to do is stop charging someone for the same IP in the same day lets say.

Sure, they would loose 15-20% (guesstimate) of clicks right? But wouldn't the service be better value therefore people would spend more?

Thats all folks.

Re:wait...

[kawika]

Google isn't necessarily losing any money at all to fake clicks. Google MAKES money on fake clicks because they take a cut of the money from every click. Google's advertisers lose the money. Long term, the risk that Google runs is that the advertisers lose confidence in the legitimacy of Adwords/Adsense and look for other alternatives. At the moment, the other alternatives are more corrupt and less principled than Google, IMO.

Re:Hmmmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

well over 90% of the clicks can be fraudulent

Ya, that's because over 90% of internet users hate your advertising methods, so we click the shit out of your links, knowing it will cost you a pile, and gain you nothing.

You have picked an advertising method that would be the equivalent of being able to NOT answer a telemarketing call, while still taking up the "sales persons" time, without wasting any of yours.

Am I saying "you shouldn't advertise on the web", no, do what you want. But you picked a method that is easy to abuse, and people are becoming increasingly irritated by the non stop marketing blitz that we are subjected to every minute, of every day.

The new economy

[nurb432]

Welcome to the new economy, run by lawyers, to benefit lawyers.

The lawyers win either way...

Re:Hmmmmm....

[qodfathr]

I answered this question here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154418&cid=129 50336 [slashdot.org] .

I agree with your analysis, but, if you read my other posting, I think you'll see that I have evidence of real click fraud.

Re:Umm What more can Google do?

[BenjyD]

What about proxies and NAT? One IP doesn't always equal one person (and vice versa, with dynamic IPs)

I think they're doing *too* much...

[KoReE]

I was terminated from their service for clicking on ads on my page. I didn't have any kind of bot set up, I just clicked on interesting ads. I even bought some things via those ads. Then I get this:

"It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the ads on your web pages. We have therefore disabled your Google
AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an
effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

A publisher's site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including
but not limited to clicks generated by a publisher on his own web
pages, clicks generated through the use of robots, automated clicking
tools, or any other deceptive software.

Practices such as these are in violation of the Google AdSense Terms
and Conditions and program polices, which can be viewed at"

I guess I didn't read the fine print well enough. I didn't realize that I was *completely* forbid from clicking on ads on my own page. I think the problem was that my site isn't terrifically high-traffic, so I was probably one of just a few people actually clicking.