Google Sued For Click Fraud

A class action lawsuit was filed in US District Court against Google alleging breach of contract, negligence, unjust enrichment, and unfair business practices-all involving charges of click fraud. Click Defense Inc, a click fraud protection firm, filed the suit in California in the name of an unknown number of plaintiffs for an amount not less than $5 million.

Discuss HereCompanies buy an advertisement through Google's AdWords program, whereby certain keywords are purchased in order to appear in the sponsored links section of the search engine's results page. Advertisers bid upon the search terms with the top spot going to the top bidder. Once the advertisement is in place, advertisers pay a fee to the search engine each time the ad is clicked by a searcher. Click fraud, estimated by some to be as high as 20% of all clicks, is caused by those with a vested interest using software that clicks on the ad hundreds or thousands of times to either drain the advertising budget of a rival company, or create revenue for the seller of the ad space. Colorado-based The lawsuit claims that since 99% of Google's revenue comes from advertising, Google has a huge financial interest in doing little about the instance of fraudulent clicks and criticizes the search giant for failure to disclose its own estimate of the number of fraudulent clicks. The suit fall just short of accusing Google of physically performing the click fraud itself. The most visible allegation is the charge of negligence on the part of Google, claiming that Google isn't doing enough to prevent the problem. Click Defense argues that the same software Google uses to track the number of clicks on an advertisement and then bill advertisers could be used to investigate and identify instances of click fraud. Google's terms of use with

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