Plaintiffs Object to Google Click Fraud Deal

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

July 24, 2006, 2:26 PM

Over four dozen plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit argued in an Arkansas court Monday that Google's proposed $90 million "click fraud" settlement does not do enough to prevent the issue. However, an independent report submitted to the court Friday contradicts those claims, saying the search giant's efforts were "reasonable."

Fifty one members of the class action suit have objected to the settlement. Most say that the so called burden-of-proof falls too much on the advertiser, and many do not have the resources to spend on investigating possible occurrences of fraudulent clicks. Some say that the deal favors lawyers over the plaintiffs, and is a handout to the company.

A third of the settlement is comprised of legal fees, payable to the attorneys in the case.

To its defense, Google pointed out that 10 of the objectors lived outside of the country, and lacked familiarity with the U.S. court system. It also continued to question the merits of the case, saying the plaintiffs are creating a suspicion of click fraud where there is none.

"Google contends that class members could never prove such a claim, because Google aggressively roots out click fraud, using highly sophisticated techniques and processes, and minimizes any impact it has on advertisers," Google said in its filing.

Meanwhile, an independent expert commissioned by both sides in the case found that Google's efforts to stop click fraud were reasonable. While Alexander Tuzhilin, a professor of information systems at New York University, said a lack of evidence hampered his investigation, he was satisfied through interviews with Google's click fraud team that the company is adequately handling the issue.