Google Sued Over Click Fraud 285
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.
Not much of a turnaround. (Score:5, Interesting)
Google's customer sues Google for not doing enough.
Deep Pockets (Score:3, Interesting)
Previous suit will help... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really. Google sued people who were artificially inflating their clicks. Now, someone is saying Google does nothing about click inflation. Who knows the specific of this individual case, but clearly Google has done *something* about click inflation.
what exactly google does to stop fraud? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not much of a turnaround. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Deep Pockets (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Hmmmmm.... (Score:3, Interesting)
google does not employ any click patterns analysis, and fraud you have to both expect, plan, pay for, and fight against; mostly by yourself.
I had a one week adwords saga [bloghi.com]. The bottom line was that if fraud exists, and the claim is right they do react, but one has to act on it, not wait for the PPC carrier to discover it.
Then since this core flaw exists, great media-opportunist companies appear and sue google in order to gain media exposure. this kind of news should become no news soon enough!
Terms of Service (Score:3, Interesting)
The company is a loser because they paid money for an ad that no one but their own people see. They could have saved money by not purchasing the ad to begin with. The IRS loses taxes because the company is providing service to Google, and then from Google to itself, meaning about half of the transaction taxes evaporate.
Re:Not google's fault (Score:2, Interesting)
What they want is this: Google actively monitor's for click fraud. Google sues company X for click fraud. Company Y sues Google for similar damages to what Google got from Company X.
See, they don't really want an end to click fraud. They just want a share of the click fraud profits.
Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud? (Score:1, Interesting)
When you click on a sponsored link, Google spawns a Russian Cracker to monitor your browsing activity for the rest of the day. If you fail to follow up your click with the appropriate purchase, the Russian Cracker is authorised to take over your identity, and do it for you.
Restitution unrealistic... (Score:2, Interesting)
If the customer is already benefitting from reduced rates to compensate for a known issue, I don't see how a court could fairly award the complaintant.
If googles customers want to pursue this, they will just force advertising rates higher, screwing no one but themselves. Especially, since google is under no onus of having to provide the same rates to all customers. They can impliment a "variable fee" for the perceived threat of potential litigation from their customers, on a per customer basis.
Irregardless of "fairness", this is justifiable.
If banks can get away with it on loans, by "examining the history and circumstances" of businesses and individuals they do business with, then so can google.
Re:what exactly google does to stop fraud? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd imagine that one trick to combat such would be to "rate" the attractiveness of the ad - i.e. Google staff acting as an "average Joe" looking at the ad and estimating how attractive it is as a guide to how often they'd expect it to be clicked. Any ad getting *much* higher traffic should be looked at more closely to see if: a) they underestimated it; b) it's a "click fraud" target.
Re:Hmmmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have not had an automatic credit like that in a very long time, but my logs are indicative of click fraud. You can write to Google and get a credit, but, for some ad campaigns, it's just not worth it -- well over 90% of the clicks can be fraudulent. The time invested to keep getting credits may out weigh the value of the campaign. YMMV.
Re:Why sue Google over this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Google is Public; Make Yourself Rich! (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Buy Google stock.
2. Perform random searches on Google.
3. Click every ad.
4. Google makes $$$ for those clicks.
5. Stock price goes to $300, $400,
6. Profit!
It's hard to imaging any other company in which you can invest and, with so little effort, produce revenue for them. Hell, you could be doing something else at the same time! I bet while watching "Dancing with the Stars" you could flow several grand into Google's bank account. If even a small percentage of Google shareholders do the same, it's just like printing money.
Re:Not google's fault (Score:3, Interesting)
I could see that if Google promised click verification in their contract with the advertisers, those advertisers could sue Google, if they could show the clicks are fraudulent. But I can't sue Google, as I have no financial interest in that transaction.
Let's say I own a house, but the front door isn't metal and the lock isn't the most secure possible. Can I be sued by my neighbor because some thief breaks into my house, on the grounds that this promotes theivery and puts his house at greater risk? Meanwhile, the thief isn't at any jeopardy.
The law doesn't work that way, and lawyers who try to make it sound like it does should be put out of work.
Hey, can I sue the lawyers making this claim, because their ridiculous suit may make my online activity more expensive? Is there a lawyer in the house?
A flawed business model (Score:5, Interesting)
Other advertising media use demographic polls to determine the approximate number of eyes and ears on their material. This is a fair means by which the value of advertising can be measured. It means the media will have to pay a reliable source to collect this information and all that but it's not as exploitable as hiring clickers in the 3rd world country to run up the advertising costs of a competitor.
There's still room for fraud and falsification but the target for such accusation is much easier to define and because of this, they [the poll people] are more likely to protect themselves with auditing and tracking measures should they be accused of, say, siding with Yahoo! or Google when reporting numbers. It would more or less absolve the advertiser and the medium from this problem and actually simplifies the business model considerably.
The internet advertisers should take a lesson from the rest of the world and simply go with what works. People will cheat every chance they get. It's clear and obvious. So you just have to find ways to reduce that risk.
Bunch of Ass Clowns (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.clickdefense.com/terms_of_services.htm
"RISK. YOUR ACCOUNT AND THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED TO YOU ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS. Click Defense, ON BEHALF OF ITSELF AND ITS DISTRIBUTORS, ADVERTISERS AND SUPPLIERS, DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARISING BY LAW OR OTHERWISE, WITH RESPECT TO YOUR ACCOUNT AND THE SERVICE (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT)."
First, you can't disclaim expressed warranties. Also kind of hypocritical that they disclaim all responsibility for their product and turns around and sue Googles for what amounts to a warranty issue.
Very unprofessional. Obviously a bunch of dumbasses.
Re:Hmmmmm.... (Score:3, Interesting)
multilple requests from the same IP could be fraud, or it could be a couple of people behind a NAT looking at the same page it's also possible you site had some weird-assed IE only shit that didn't render properly in mozilla or even some pathetic ASP page on a windows server kept timing out and people kept trying to reload the corrupted page. What might it be? If your adveritsing in a magazine, you'll have to assume the the advert you've paid for will only be looked at by a small percentage, and mail campain only get a 1% responce rate if it's very exceptional, spam probably gets a thousandth of that. If you advertised in a magazine, and inserted blow-in business reply cards is everytime the post office delivers one that's blank fraud or just a cost of doing business? Not every click is going to be a well-qualified, motivated potential purchaser; but some are going to bookmark you site and compare prices else where, maybe they'll come back, maybe they will not. What would happen if google sued you because a potential customer bookmarked your site after following an advert depriving them of revenue when they returned?
Re:I'm confused... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmmmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, there are times when, right at midnight, there is a sudden and dramatic rise in the number of queries which would produce my ad, and my CTR goes to 100%. They all come from the a block of IP addresses owned by one of my competitors. Sometimes they come somewhat more scattered in the IP address space, but a few whois searches reveals that all of the offending IPs are related (through business ventures, or have the same registered mailing address, etc.)
They click the ad until my daily budget is drained, and then my ad stops for the day.