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Google Sued Over Click Fraud
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jun 30, 2005 07:51 AM
from the clicky-click dept.
from the clicky-click dept.
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.
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Search Companies Team Up Against Click Fraud 84 comments
isabotage3 writes to tell us that the top three search companies, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, have teamed up to create an alliance to combat click fraud. The fact that these three bitter rivals can team up shows just how serious the industry has become about preserving the current online advertising boom that is currently underway. From the article: "Click fraud has attracted an increasing amount of attention amid class-action lawsuits and industry studies asserting advertisers have been collectively overcharged by more than $1 billion for bogus sales leads during the past four years. Google and Yahoo contend that those estimates are gross exaggerations generated by opportunistic lawyers and online advertising consultants hoping to cash in on the anxieties triggered by their calculations."
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Not much of a turnaround. (Score:5, Interesting)
Google's customer sues Google for not doing enough.
Re:Not much of a turnaround. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 much of a turnaround. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not much of a turnaround. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not much of a turnaround. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not much of a turnaround. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Not google's fault (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Failing to prevent? (Score:4, Informative)
In other news, Sears is being sued for failing to conduct background checks on the purchasers of air conditioners. It seems foreign assassins have been dropping them out of windows and killing unsuspecting Americans.
Failing to prevent? I mean, come on. This only makes sense if Google signed a contract with the advertisers saying they would implement measures to prevent this.
1-800 (Score:4, Insightful)
"Ma' Bell didn't tell all the callers that they could only dial our number if they were going to buy something".
I'm confused... (Score:5, Insightful)
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]...
Proof of Fraud on Google's Own Website!!! (Score:5, Funny)
IMHO (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmm.... if my advertising is costing me money... (Score:4, Insightful)
TOS problems (Score:5, Insightful)
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):
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. :-)
Got extortion? (Score:5, Funny)
This seems like a rather obvious case of extortion if you ask me. I can picture the "negotiations" now.
Click Defense: Buy our software
Google: No thanks, we're good
Click Defense: Buy it or we'll file a lawsuit and make lots of public statements saying you are allowing your customers to be ripped off (reminding them that people beleive anything they read on the IntArweb)
Google: Pack Sand
Click Defense: You'll regret this, it'll now cost you 10x as much as our shitty software
Why don't we hold companies and individuals criminally resposible for this kinds of abuse of the legal system?
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.
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:what exactly google does to stop fraud? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Sneaky (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:It's a funny old world, innit (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:wait... (Score:4, Informative)
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: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.