If Your Clickfraud Scheme Fails, Sue Google

from the always-have-a-plan-b dept

Thu, Aug 31st 2006 11:08am — Joseph Weisenthal

You could almost dedicate an entire law firm to lawsuits against Google were it not for the fact that virtually all of them are baseless and don't stand a snowball's chance of ever collecting any money from the company. The latest such case is brought by a woman who is suing Google for suspending her Adsense account due to clickfraud. She wants $250,000 to compensate her for the 100 hours it took her to determine the placement of the ads on her site. And she admits to clicking on her own ads, but only, she says, because she wanted to screen the advertisers. Even if this explanation were true, you'd think she would have already learned her lesson since Yahoo (she's suing them too, of course) also suspended her advertising account. If only the suit had any chance of winning, then, as a commenter to the above article point out, you could run a nice scam by signing up for adsense, clicking your own ads, getting suspended, and then suing. Of course, Google's own lawyers probably aren't complaining too much about all of this easy work.

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12 Comments

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crystalattice (profile), 31 Aug 2006 @ 11:43am

AdSense does let you click your ads
You just have to setup the code on your site to not track the clicks. You can then click all the ads on your site but it won't hurt you because no one gets money, hence no one can claim click fraud.
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Ryan, 31 Aug 2006 @ 12:32pm

who values her time at 2500/hour? Where do I sign up for this job?
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Ryan, 31 Aug 2006 @ 12:32pm

duh
oh.. that's probably her laywer fee...duh!
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Aug 2006 @ 12:55pm

what?!?! o.O
she took 100 hours to place advertisments? she doesn't deserve to have a web page... if you can't judge ad placement within 10 minutes, maximum, then you have no aesthetic sense what-so-ever, and you may as well hire someone to do your entire page for you because, even without having to see it, i can tell you it sucks.
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Shohat, 31 Aug 2006 @ 1:03pm

As a site owner
I advertise via adwords (both my own sites and affiliated products) , and nothing, NOTHING compares to Adwords customer service . The make Dreamhost , Paypal , Godaddy and Dotster just look bad .
They are really really helpful , always give full answers and actually provide insightful tips . I really get a feeling they cherish their Adwords customers , and this is why they are so uncompromising when it comes to click fraud and dumb crazy bitches that click their own ads .
And if anyone should be suing anyone ,Google and the customers that paid for those Ads should sue her for fraud .
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Aug 2006 @ 2:12pm

Damn...
I should join and make it class action.
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Damon Billian, 31 Aug 2006 @ 2:19pm

What a ...
Tool this woman is. Perhaps she could've asked Google if what she was doing was wrong in the first place?
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crumbly, 31 Aug 2006 @ 2:28pm

we reached the edge
As I watched the Internet roll out to the public in 95 or so, I watched the "grandma" users trying to setup eudora.. now everyone can use email. Now we get to watch the non technical users experience blogs and configurations and adwords.. they will catch on..

eventually...
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Sohrab, 31 Aug 2006 @ 9:14pm

wow. people like this, I hope those lawyers end up ripping apart and taking their house away.
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Marc, 31 Aug 2006 @ 10:22pm

Another stupid bitch who is too lazy to do REAL work and just wants to take advantage of the shitty American litigation system. She should do us all a favor and take a long walk off a short pier.
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Donald Duck, 1 Sep 2006 @ 12:26am

She must be Goofy.
What was she trying pull? Didn't she read the Terms of Service before she SIGNED up? No clicking from your own computer! Draws the lady a picture. I'll call my art work
'Fraud'

I I I I
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2006 @ 10:02am

just plain dumb
Click on the link and read the article on eWeek because its even more ridiculous. It says that it took her STAFF took 100 hours. What kind of bread brains did she hire to do this? It also says that she demanded competing products not allowed to be advertised on her site, which is completely contradictory because AdSense searches the contents of her website to show relavent ads (i.e. competitors and similar products). She claims Google has done "irreparable damage" to her reputation because of this case, but after visiting her site (bravacorp.com) I can say her reputation was non existant as a 15 year old can do a better job making a professional looking site.

Its a complete noob job from the ugly default blue hyperlinks to stock photos which are shrunk down unproportionally. Then I took a quick look at the source.. Basically, it looks like someone got a pirated copy of Frontpage and made the site like it was a word processor. I don't think this person knows what HTML tags are. It was probably made by a homeworking mom who handed in a resume that has blogging under qualifications for this job.

Anyways, I'm trying to make sense of this case.. but I guess the act of trying to find logic in irrationality is meaningless. So I'm just going to stop here and move on.
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