Yahoo Sued Because Its Ad Platform Sucks?

Legal Issues

from the too-many-lawyers dept

Wed, May 16th 2007 6:44am — Mike Masnick

It's always fun to read the justification for various class action lawsuits. Many of them have little to do with protecting the "class" and plenty to do with enriching the lawyers involved. The latest is a class action lawsuit against Yahoo, claiming that it's a violation of securities law that Yahoo's ad platform sucks. That's an interesting claim. Who knew that it was against securities law to make a product that didn't live up to expectations. If that's the case, think how many class action lawsuits are out there waiting to happen. Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman cut through some of the details at that link above, with Danny pointing out how ridiculous it is to think that Yahoo's loss in market share has anything to do with its troublesome ad platform, rather than its inability to serve users as successfully as Google. Still, simply being worse than a competitor in serving your customers apparently doesn't make for as interesting a class action lawsuit.

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24 Comments

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BillGod, 16 May 2007 @ 7:07am

Join ME!
I am going to start a class action lawsuit on everything SUCKY!

1. AT&T
2. Microsoft
3. Any EMO band that came out in the last 4 years
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- bandwagon litigator, 16 May 2007 @ 7:11am
  
  Re: Join ME!
  i'm in!
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xxl3w, 16 May 2007 @ 7:25am

Microsoft
Windows isn't unstable, it's the hardware companies writing faulty drivers. (HEY! that's the excuse for why linux is so unstable!)
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- Um, What?, 16 May 2007 @ 9:42am
  
  Re: Microsoft
  Since when is Linux unstable?
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The Masked Moondog, 16 May 2007 @ 7:35am

Class action all the way!!!
AT&T
Comcast
Microsoft
RIAA
State of California
Dr. Phil
Taco Bell
McDonalds
Borders
Starbucks
IBM
Chicago Cubs
LA Clippers
VH1's Celebreality division

If we win half of these, we can make a billion.
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Andy, 16 May 2007 @ 7:38am

What? Hardware companies are writing and releasing drivers for linux now? Oh Microsoft, you and your spin!
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- Anonymous Coward, 16 May 2007 @ 7:52am
  
  Re:
  i believe he's saying that linux is unstable due to faulty drivers. therefore windows is unstable due to hardware companies writing faulty drivers.
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TheDock22, 16 May 2007 @ 7:44am

Huh?
"Yahoo and certain of its officers and directors with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934."

The last I checked we were in the year 2007. I think any lawsuit against an internet company using a law before 1970 (1978 for that matter!) should not only be thrown out, but the litigants should be taken out into the street and shot.
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- Anonymous Coward, 16 May 2007 @ 7:52am
  
  Re: Huh?
  That's a great use of our lawmakers' time and taxpayer money, rewriting all our laws every twenty to thirty years. Great idea.
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- chad, 16 May 2007 @ 7:57am
  
  Re: Huh?
  TheDoc22 said: The last I checked we were in the year 2007. I think any lawsuit against an internet company using a law before 1970 (1978 for that matter!) should not only be thrown out, but the litigants should be taken out into the street and shot.
  
  Really? So if I were "an internet company" it should be okay for me to say, kill someone? I mean the law against murder was written before 1970. Come on, corporations are well aware of the laws, places like Yahoo have hundreds of lawyers. Breaking older laws should be doublely punishable! I mean if it's old they've certainly had enough time to read it.
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  - TheDock22, 16 May 2007 @ 8:29am
    
    Re: Re: Huh?
    Actually, TELLING someone to kill someone else is a punishable offense and the law for that is only about 20 years old. Murder laws and capitol offense laws are being constantly being written updated to change with the times.
    
    So, to update my statement because there are complete morons that take a statement and turn it into black and white (since they cannot understand the concept that laws are always gray area)...any company using a law that has not been UPDATED since the 1970s should have their case thrown out and pure grounds of stupidity. Those laws are ancient and make no sense when it comes internet technology.
    
    Laws were made to change as society changes and grows. Scrapping the bottom of the barrel for some law that has no value today is a waste of everyones time.
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  - TheDock22, 16 May 2007 @ 8:35am
    
    Re: Re: Huh?
    Actually, TELLING someone to kill someone else is a punishable offense and the law for that is only about 20 years old. Murder laws and capitol offense laws are being constantly being written updated to change with the times.
    
    So, to update my statement because there are complete morons that take a statement and turn it into black and white (since they cannot understand the concept that laws are always gray area)...any company using a law that has not been UPDATED since the 1970s should have their case thrown out and pure grounds of stupidity. Those laws are ancient and make no sense when it comes internet technology.
    
    Laws were made to change as society changes and grows. Scrapping the bottom of the barrel for some law that has no value today is a waste of everyones time.
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  - Paul`, 17 May 2007 @ 5:29am
    
    Re: Re: Huh?
    I don't see how an internet company can kill someone seeing they typicly arn't living things...
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Team Tutorials, 16 May 2007 @ 8:14am

How do I get in
How can I get in on the class action lawsuit? I heard Microsoft Windows is the next target.
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- Charles Griswold, 16 May 2007 @ 7:30pm
  
  Re: How do I get in
  How can I get in on the class action lawsuit? I heard Microsoft Windows is the next target.
  
  Hear, hear! I would like to go on record as saying that as a computer repair technician, I FREAKING HATE VISTA!
  
  There. I feel better now.
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ehrichweiss, 16 May 2007 @ 8:45am

It DOES suck...
and it sucks for more than one reason. If you're an advertiser paying premium bucks to get the word out you might expect that the "agency" handling your case would try to find as many good publishers as possible to handle your ads but such is not the case with Yahoo.

I run a website for a local weekly newspaper that's been online since 1998, we've got excellent PageRank with Google and excellent placement with Yahoo but the moment we applied for YPN they put us on "well, we'll have to think about whether we think you're cool enough to publish advertisements for us". It took Google all of 3 hours to decide they wanted us(they were actually our second choice) but I haven't heard from YPN in almost a year. That seems to hint that they really aren't all that interested in making this work.

The old phrase "beggars can't be choosers" seems to apply here.
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- Shohat, 16 May 2007 @ 10:06am
  
  Re: It DOES suck...
  You seem to misunderstand the differences between Adsense and YPN.
  Adsense can be put on 15,000 MFA sites with automatically generated content, and you can earn a decent 500$ a day from that alone. Google is happy to get it's share from ANY click, any site.
  
  YPN on the other hand, actually chooses publishers, and pays out around 40% more than adsenseto publishers that do get in. It also hits hard with smartpricing for non-converting clicks btw.
  
  (I am a professional that works with both platforms on a large scale )
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MPMsoft! Medical Billing Software Systems., 16 May 2007 @ 9:05am

Yahoo Ad Service
I can't say about anyone else's experience with Yahoo/Overture Ad Service, but the moment our Yahoo Ads went online, our website: http://www.MPMsoft.com was flooded with hundreds of bogus clicks from warez sites and gaming sites (not quite our target market). We immediately called Yahoo who told us they would look into it, but that it would take a week or two to investigate. Instead of watching our ad dollars go down the drain - and then have Yahoo tell us that they couldn't find a problem - (Google's technique), we just pulled the campaign and demanded a complete refund of all our money (including setup fees), which Yahoo (much to our surprise) did (it took a month). I never imagined that in a world where you can make a purchase at the grocery store, and then a moment later log in to your online banking and see the transaction, that a company like Yahoo that is native to the net, would have such a dismal service (it almost seemed sabotaged). I don't recall Overture being that bad.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 May 2007 @ 11:09am

I once bought a McDonalds burger, and it looked *nothing* like they do on the adverts.
The one on TV was clearly a few inches tall, with mouthwatering beef and cheese standing proud and seperate.

The one I received was squashed into a box too small, the cheese was mostly on the top of the bun, and the beef looked like it had been scraped off a chicken.

Obviously, lawsuit time.
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Nick, 16 May 2007 @ 11:18am

So we should win what a trillion or so off of Bush?
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Anonymous Coward, 16 May 2007 @ 11:36am

I believe that this is a case where the stockholders are upset that Yahoo is losing lots of revenue due to it releasing crappy products.

I should also mention that Yahoo! has terrible customer support. I used to spend thousands of dollars on their products. One day, they lost a bunch of data that I had paid them to track for me. They would not refund me, nor give me credit. They then told me if I was unhappy to use someone elses products, which I did.

I have since sold all of my yahoo stock and stopped spending money on Yahoo. It is a terrible business model when you screw over your paying customers and tell them to use someone elses products.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 May 2007 @ 11:37am

As a stockholder
I would probably want to join this lawsuit. Our stock prices are dropping because Yahoo is not focusing hard enough on ad revenue. Instead they keep coming out with free products that costs them billions.
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Stephan Hall, 16 May 2007 @ 12:52pm

cockroaches
All of this discussion and still the real reason hasn't been discussed. Of course the legal action persists. The judicial system is managed by blood sucking lawyers. It's such a blemish on American society. Everything cost more ....... because of lawyers. Like Vultures ..... they wait for the opportunity. Lining their pockets at the expense of the innocent and poor.
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Celes, 16 May 2007 @ 6:24pm

From the actual complaint, it looks like the suit is not so much complaining that the service sucks but rather that Yahoo! deliberately misrepresented the abilities of its service. How this ties into securities law is unclear to me, though; I have a hard time believing that a potential investor in Yahoo's stock would not have invested if they had known that the ads would not be well-targeted. I could see companies that paid for the service wanting their money back, yes. But securities law is there to protect shareholders, creditors, and the like (at least to my understanding from classes that are now a couple of years old in my brain).
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