Google Hypocrites

I wrote a long time ago that I had a Google ad-sense account and they cancelled it claiming that I had clicked my own ads to increase revenue. I knew that was ridiculous because I never deliberately clicked my own ads. The only thing I can figure is that their sophisticated method of detecting fraud was wrong. In any event it was no big deal to me. I had the thing for a long time and had a whopping $12.00 or so. I never figured I would make money with it but put it in to see how it went. I was pretty disgusted with Google because they just assumed I was guilty and that was that. Now I see that Google is paying 90 million dollars for fraud with its pay per click ads.

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) – Web search leader Google Inc. said on Wednesday it had agreed to pay up to $90 million to settle a class action lawsuit over advertising fraud by outside parties on its site, in a bid to put the controversy behind it.

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 2002, it said.

The $90 million would involve legal fees and credits — rather than any cash payments — to all advertisers who apply to be part of the class settlement, once the judge certifies the agreement, Google spokesman Steve Langdon said.

The case covers all advertisers using Google’s pay-per-click advertising system back to February 2002 through the date when the judge certifies the case. The final settlement hearing is expected to take place in coming weeks.

The vast majority of Google’s revenues, or around 97 percent, are the result of pay-per-click ads, which critics say can be vulnerable to fraud.

Bearish analysts have harped on the threat of click fraud as the single greatest risk to Google’s advertising-dependent business model, although the company has downplayed the risk, saying only a small percentage of search ads are fraudulent.Reuters

It seems to me that if Google is paying they are guilty of some kind of wrong doing. 90 million is a lot of wrong doing. I am glad this happened to them. I was not guilty and was made to feel like a criminal by their nasty emails. They are evidently guilty so they should feel like criminals.

Of course, 90 million is a drop in the ocean to them.

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2 Responses to “Google Hypocrites”

  1. N. Mallory says:

    Huh.

    My main complaint with them is that their software that determines what sorts of ads to show doesn’t seem to work very well. I write on all sorts of topics and most of the time when I see the ads they are for “blogs” or “blogging” or are blank. I think I’d make more money if they were actually more specific to the topics.

    I do think there’s something fishy about how they do all their “figuring” though.

    I’m not really going to complain because the amount I make actually pays for the website which is all I wanted. That way when my CPA father looks at my records he can’t complain about the wasted money going to the internet. 😉

  2. Big Dog says:

    Well you probably have a lot more visitors than I do. I only earned a little bit of money and they took that when they cut me off. I don’t mind being cut off but I did nothing wrong.

    You are right, they do not target the ads very well.

    I think their special tools to see what is going on do not work well and I got caught up in the mess. Thank goodness Bluehost is only $6.95 a month! I will never use the 10 gb of space or 250 gb bandwidth per month but the price is not bad and the support is great. (one day I might just buy my own server)

    I figured the ads would pay the monthly cost of the server but I am thankful to have a good job because if i were counting on Google i would be screwed. I wonder if they will shut themselves down for illegal clicking??