Google & Advertisers Both Lose

And surprise, the lawyers win!
You just gotta love lawyers who specialize in class action lawsuits.

“An Arkansas judge Thursday approved a $90 million settlement between Google and advertisers who claimed the Internet search engine company improperly billed them for "clicks" that didn’t lead to genuine customers seeking their products.

By settling claims made in the plaintiffs’ class-action lawsuit, Google will give advertising credits that are the equivalent of a $3.80 refund on every $1,000 spent in its advertising network during the past 4 years.
No one will receive cash except the lawyers, who will split $30 million. "

On a recent conference call with analyst, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel also addressed “click fraud” (More Info) and Yahoo has now agreed to have advertisers submit click fraud claims.(More Info)  Yahoo got away with paying only $4.95 million in legal expenses.

While the settlement resolves the claim of a few businesses it doesn’t address the real problem.   Google is making an effort to track click-fraud by showing advertisers the number of clicks they’re filtering out. (More Info)  Will it be enough?   Click fraud is still running rampant thanks to spyware, specialized Click-fraud software and sophisticated automatic processes called “bots”.