April 23, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Search giant Google was sued on Tuesday by one of the users of its AdSense program, who claims he was deceived and unfairly charged for ads displayed on third-party sites through the program.
The Plaintiff, private investigator David Almeida, says he signed up to promote his business through Google's AdWords program, which displays paid listings alongside search results.
His lawsuit accuses Google of fraudulently charging Almeida, and other advertisers, by "redefining the universally understood meaning of an input form left blank."
Almeida says he set up his Google advertising account, leaving blank the maximum per-click bid box for AdSense, which runs ads alongside targeted content on third-party sites, because he understood "optional" to mean he could opt out of the program by not filling it in.
The system, it turns out, requires the user to input a bid of $0, or the maximum bid for AdWords is applied to the AdSense program as well.
According to reports published Wednesday, Google says it has yet to receive the complaint.
The lawsuit was filed in US District Court in San Jose by the law firm Kabateck, Brown and Kellner, which has filed numerous consumer-protection lawsuits seeking multimillion-dollar damages. The current suit against Google seeks unspecified damages and is pursuing class-action status.
Brian Kabateck, Almeida's lawyer estimates that Google earns hundreds of millions of dollars through unwanted advertising.
Kabateck has reportedly been involved in action against Google in the past, and joined in a $90 million "click fraud" settlement against the company in 2006. He has also reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with Yahoo! over search related complaints.
This suit was brought by a California class action mill that has sued Google several times before. You can see the orginal filed Complaint here:
http://www.TechnologyBuyersAdvocate.com/almeida_versus_google.pdf
What a crock!
posted by: Demiglaz | April 24, 2008 04:02PM
