ClickFraud settlement

Behind in posting news here, but this one is important.
1) credit on all AdWords accounts
2) but what are they going to do to prevent future fraud?

Google Settles Suit Over Ad Referrals - New York Times:

SAN FRANCISCO, March 8 (AP) — Google has agreed to pay $90 million to settle a lawsuit contending it overcharged thousands of advertisers who paid for bogus sales referrals generated through a ruse known as click fraud.

The proposed settlement, announced by the company Wednesday, would apply to all advertisers in Google's network during the last four years. Any Web site showing improper charges dating back to 2002 will be eligible for an account credit that could be used toward future ads distributed by Google.

NOTE :
The lawsuit, filed by Lane's Gifts and Collectibles on behalf of all Google advertisers, also named Yahoo. Yahoo said Wednesday that it intended to fight the lawsuit.

David nails it

All around good guy and telco thinker David get's it right

Piece on alternative network models, from monopoly to customer owned.

Big problem for the telco's is that Google figured out how to monetize the network.

isen.blog:
Subhead: Google World

The fifth scenario is a free market scenario in which some company figures out how to make money running a network business despite (or maybe because of) the fact that raw IP connectivity is becoming free. Google is my candidate.

Google has apps like its search engine that we can't live without. Others, like Blogger, Gmail, Google News and Google Maps, we simply use frequently. All of them are free. Each of them informs its personalized advertising business, its money machine. Google Internet service could also be free. It, too, would pay its own way by informing G-Ads. G-Net could tell G-Ads about things only an ISP would know, like where you are and what you do on the Internet beyond the Google family. To get good data, Google would have to run an open, application-neutral network. G-Net would have an added benefit -- it would be a pre-emptive defense against other Internet operators who might try to charge Google for use of their network (see my VON Magazine column Disconnectivity, April 2005, for more on this).

It would not be the first time a company offered a freebie to get customers. Grocery stores don't charge for parking. Gas stations don't charge for bathroom use. Telcos don't charge for directories.

Google's size scares some people. The information it collects scares others. I think these fears are unwarranted as long as Google makes good on its public pledge, 'Don't Be Evil.' To Google CEO Eric Schmidt the pledge means that Google should follow newspaper ethics by maintaining a clear prohibition against its advertising side interfering with its applications. Schmidt explains, just as a reporter should ideally write fearlessly about a bad-acting business even if that business advertises in the reporter's paper, so should the Google applications themselves never discriminate on the basis of what the advertising side of Google 'knows.'

Like all scenarios, the Google scenario may never happen. Blogger Doc Searls points out that Google is now a monoculture, thus a single failure could bring it down. Or perhaps its size will make it hard to manage well. Or maybe a high-visibility subpoena will blow the public's faith in 'Don't Be Evil.' But the Google scenario is at least as plausible as the other four."