Google Settles $90 Million 'Click Fraud' Claim

[pcdoc]

An Arkansas judge on Thursday approved a $90 million settlement between Google and its advertisers who claimed the leading Internet search company improperly billed them for fraudulent "clicks" on their ads.

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Google will give advertising credits that are the equivalent of a $4.50 refund on every $1,000 spent in its advertising network during the past 4¼ years.

No one will receive cash except the lawyers, who will split $30 million.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2...935.shtml?s=ic

[Memphis]

The American Dream, Truth, Justice and Fair clicking for all.

[AaronSOLD]

The American Dream: Lawers screw companies in the name of the people, the people get $4.50 and the lawers get $30,000,000.00

Honestly, are they saying that .45% of advertisers money was all the click fraud amounted to?

[REW Tyler]

Figures, I should've been a lawyer.

[Memphis]

Quick settlement, quick paycheck. Lawyers are happy, "G" is happy.

[Memphis]

excerp from cutts:

"Similarly, the California attorneys’ repeated statements to the media–and to this Court–that the $90 million settlement fund will cover “only 0.5% of the damages” is not only egregiously false, it is absurd. The California attorneys take the position that the “damages” are 200 times $90 million, or $18 billion, which is more revenue than Google has received in its entire existence. There is no conceivable theory under which anything close to all of Google’s revenue–let alone more than all of Google’s total revenue–could be attributed to invalid clicks. "


http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/

[Tyson]

The American Dream: Lawers screw companies in the name of the people, the people get $4.50 and the lawers get $30,000,000.00

Honestly, are they saying that .45% of advertisers money was all the click fraud amounted to?

While $30 million is a huge chunk of dough, there were quite a few lawyers who worked for over a year on this case. Also, I believe the judge decided the lawyers cut, not the lawyers themselves.

Believe it or not, this was probably the best deal advertisers were going to get. The suit was going to be near impossible to win, given the fact that all advertisers contractually agreed to pay for all clicks when signing up for Adwords. And since there is no standard definition of click fraud, Google's case was pretty easy. Regardless, the suit has seemed to spark a fire under the pants of the engines to deal with this issue.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/finan...h_down&chan=tc