Until March of 2006, Google counted "doubleclicks" as two valid clicks on advertisements. As Google admitted in a report filed with the court in its settlement attempt (which may be decided by tomorrow) they knew from the beginning of the adwords program that many, many users doubleclicked on their ads, because people normally double-click on items on the windows desktop and just do the same thing in a browser.
They knew this because the doubleclicks would be 1/4 a second apart, and from the same IP/cookie session.
Yet until March of this year, Google executives decided to keep charging advertisers for TWO CLICKS for each doubleclick, because they were worried about the impact removing those invalid clicks might have to their financial bottom line.
If Google were even remotely serious about stopping clickfraud- they would do one thing RIGHT THIS MOMENT- they would give advertisers the IPs of each click, and they would give the time and date of those clicks. This would allow advertisers to accurately do log checks and see for themselves if there is massive fraud going on or not. There is no privacy concern whatsoever, because the individual websites should already have the IPs of their visitors already. What is the harm of google giving a log file with IPs? In the case of doubleclicking, if users had been given a log file with IP and time data, the problem would have been discovered over two years ago.
Yet Google still refuses to give a list of IPs and time.
They've admitted they defrauded their advertisers for possibly massive sums of money with the doubleclick charges, yet now we're supposed to trust them that they arent allowing any other kind of scam? Hey google- NOBODY BELIEVES YOU ANYMORE. Your cute little "concession" today about listing a "invallid click" number along with the adsense rules is a complete joke- how can anyone verify that number means anything if you still refuse to give logs of IPs? Google- you do realize the only reason people still put up with this kind of secrecy is because you still have a lock on the market, a practical monopoly, right?
Quoting from the 45 page report issued by the "independent expert" earlier this week:
The change in the doubleclick policy that was considered in Winter 2005 and implemented in March 2006. It turned out that the change in the doubleclick policy (i.e., not to charge advertisers for the immediate second click in a doubleclick) had non-trivial financial implications for Google. Being a publicly traded company at that time, this change would have had a noticeable effect on Google'ss total revenues with corresponding implications for the financial performance of the company. Therefore, this policy change had legitimate concerns for Google's management, and these financial implications have been discussed in the company. Still, despite its noticeable negative effects on its financial performance, Google decided to abandon the old doubleclick policy and not to charge advertisers for the second click, which was an appropriate action to take.
Doubleclick constitutes a special case. For me, the second click in the doubleclick is invalid, as I argued in Section 8, and the advertisers should not be charged for it. It is not clear to me why it took Google so long to revise the policy of charging for doubleclicks.
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Interesting, do you have pointers to proof? |
CONCLUSIONS
“In summary, I have been asked to evaluate Google’s invalid click detection efforts and to conclude whether these efforts are reasonable or not. Based on my evaluation, I conclude that Google’s efforts to combat click fraud are reasonable.” (p. 47)
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Why dont you list the rest of his conclusion where he states "Although Google has provided me with no actual data to support my conclusion, I went ahead and said I think they're being reasonable. "
Any actual scientist would be thrown out of academia for making such a conclusion. Hell, I'd fail any high school science student if he wrote than in a report.
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John, I have not digested the report and matter therein. I just snipped what Eric of Reuter posted... |
news : – Judge Joe Griffin ruled today to approve the proposed settlement
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/pdf/lanes_google_final_order.pdf |
further news- Stephen Malouf has "settled" over 40 class action cases with judge griffin over the last 10 years. none have ever gone to trial.
and i'm sure there has never been any kickbacks to the judge with the average settlement being 20 million dollars.
i'm sure that judge just loves to settle class action claims from malouf that give absolutely nothing to the injured parties.
this is arkansas, after all. the bastion of truth and non-corruption.
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Here's a good quote:
"I have been asked to evaluate Google’s invalid click detection efforts and to conclude
whether these efforts are reasonable or not. As a part of this evaluation, I have visited
Google’s campus three times, examined various internal documents, interviewed several
Google’s employees, have seen different demos of their invalid click inspection system,
and examined internal reports and charts showing various aspects of performance of
Google’s invalid click detection system. Based on all these studied materials and the
information narrated to me by Google’s employees, I conclude that Google’s efforts to
combat click fraud are reasonable." |
"In summary, I have been asked to evaluate Google’s invalid click detection efforts and to
conclude whether these efforts are reasonable or not. Based on my evaluation, I conclude
that Google’s efforts to combat click fraud are reasonable." |
Hey nice way to repeat the last paragraph on the last page of his report, twice.
Why dont you try repeating the part where he says that Google gave him absolutely no hard data or logs that would show him as a scientist that clickfraud was under control, but that he was allowed to meet with a google engineering team on campus three times that assured him clickfraud was under control and "that was good enough for him"
Left that part out did you?
Own some google stock, perchance? Wondering why the stock was still down 6 points if this bullshit settlement by an ARKANSAS judge didn't forever take away all liability for google?
Here's a hint- there are over 50 lawsuits against this settlement RIGHT NOW. The lawyer who brokered it, as well as the arkansas judge, are utterly corrupt and anyone in the legal profession knows it.
The last case malouf and this judge settled was with the UN over some warlord in africa who was charged with stealing mineral and mining rights from Zaire. These two approved a "settlement" that gave malouf millions, the people of Zaire nothing, and told the UN that there was nothing wrong.
Do you see the pattern yet? Do you see why large companies like Malouf?
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