The lead plaintiff in a click-fraud lawsuit filed against Google in June will step aside in order to focus on its business—selling technology that prevents click fraud.
Fort Collins CO-based Click Defense said in a statement that the company would withdraw from the lead role in the suit, which is seeking class action status in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, but would continue to press its claims against Google as a plaintiff when the case comes before a judge.
“We are only withdrawing as a representative plaintiff in order to concentrate our efforts in helping our clients develop their claims of click fraud,” Click Defense CEO Scott Boyenger said in the press release. “We remain a member of the class and our click fraud claims against Google will still be litigated if the class is certified.”
On Wednesday, AIT, an Internet service provider to customers in the mid-Atlantic states and the Carolinas, announced it would take over as lead plaintiff in the Google suit.
The suit alleges that Google has neglected to take necessary action to prevent fraudulent clicks on the pay-per-click ads that it syndicates through its AdSense network Web publishers who are part of the network receive a portion of the fee Google collects from advertisers when users click on those ads.
Advertisers have charged that some Web site operators have been illegitimately boosting their revenues from the AdSense program by clicking on the Google ads themselves. The suit filed by Click Defense alleges that this has cost AdSense advertisers at least $5 million. While Google and Yahoo! both reimburse advertisers for what they claim are all detectable cases of click fraud, some marketers have voiced the opinion that the large search engines are moving slowly to detect and compensate for click fraud in order to protect their own ad revenues.
“Google is able to block spamming efforts from its own Google Gmail service and should do the same to protect its pay-per-click advertising clients,” said AIT CEO Clarence Briggs in a statement announcing his company’s new role in the lawsuit. “This is a business model that pays lip service to concern about fraud but in fact stands to lose money if the fraud is vigorously pursued.” He said AIT could prove it has lost “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to click fraud for which Google refused to make restitution.
A hearing on the motion to certify the lawsuit as a class action is scheduled for May 2006.
