A lousy 37 cents!

Under the Google click fraud settlement, advertising “credits will be awarded on a pro rata basis, taking into account the amount that you paid to Google for the ads and
the total amount of credits available. For example, if the amounts that you paid to Google for the affected ads were 1% of Google’s revenues from online advertising since January 1, 2002, you would be eligible to receive 1% of the total available credits.”

Since the settlement was for less than 1% of Google revenue during the covered time frame, everyone gets back less than 1% of what they spent. :( Clickshift gets some money back, but it feels like about 37 cents.

Of course, we don’t really get it back. We get a credit that we can use for “up to 50%” of our future ad buys. So now we have to spend at Google just to get our miniscule share of the settlement – which was a settlement about clicks that they never should have billed us for in the first place.

Two thoughts:

1. No wonder people hate class action attorneys. They sure as heck aren’t getting their fees in 50% ad credits!

2. Either (a) the attorneys were terrible and settled for much, much less than they should have, or (b) the evidence wasn’t great that click fraud is the huge problem some people think it is, the attorneys thought they might lose at trial, and this was the best settlement they could hope to get. I think (b) coupled with the incentive of $30M in cash fees off the top.

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I think the real potential legal liability on the horizon for Google comes from their library scanning project. A friend of mine is one of the attorneys on the case. (I haven’t discussed the case with him). He’s not an ambulance-chaser – he’s a leading IP professor at one of the top law schools in the country. With statutory copyright damages of $750 to $30,000 per work, there’s a whole lot at stake here. I’ll try to figure out how much in a later post.

Related Tags: click fraud, google, Lane's gifts, google book search, copyright