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Lawyer Sues Google Over Ads
Don't ever mess with a lawyer and his ads. Boston lawyer Hal K. Levitte has filed a lawsuit against Google for placing his ads on parked domain pages, and he is seeking class action certification. Levitte advertised his firm through a Google AdWords pay-per-click campaign last year. His lawsuit says he spent $136.11 for ads on parked domains and error pages -- 15.3 percent of an ad campaign that cost him a total of $887.67.
Although the ads on parked pages received more than 200,000 impressions, they generated just 668 clicks through to Levitte's site and zero conversions. Ads on errors pages brought just 25 clicks and no conversions.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., by lawyers from the San Francisco firm Schubert Jonckheer Kolbe & Kralowec, Information Week reports. The lawsuit alleges that Google's sale of low-quality ads constituted fraud and unjust enrichment. The lawsuit seeks class certification on behalf of other aggrieved Google advertisers. "We believe it's a problem that affects all [Google's] advertisers equally," Schubert Jonckheer partner Kimberly Kralowec told Information Week.
If Kralowec's name sounds familiar, it may be because she is the longtime author of two legal blogs, The UCL Practitioner, a blog about unfair competition law and class actions in California, and The Appellate Practitioner, a blog about appellate practice in California and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on July 16, 2008 at 09:45 AM | Permalink
| Comments (4)
Comments
Hi ,
Thanks for the latest happening on the " E - World ."
Again its a serious matter , no matter whose doing the offense .
Everybody should get punished whose doing something wrong .
Thanks .
With best regards ,
Lorra.
Posted by: Lorra | Jul 16, 2008 2:51:14 PM
It will be interesting to see how this one plays out. On the one hand, it seems unreasonable for Google to present ads on parked domains and error pages when its basic stance is that AdSense publishers are not supposed to post the ads on pages with little or no content. However, "fraud and unjust enrichment"? Seems to be a stretch to me. More like just poor business practice.
Posted by: David | Jul 16, 2008 6:14:25 PM
Hi,
I truly believe that there is much wrong happening in this Cyber world and the laws need to be develop with much care to efficiently protect end user's interests. Which is not happening right now.
In this particular case, hmmm, I think the attorney will not have a good case if he had allowed Google to show add in google's network: there is this option(checkbox) you need to uncheck it to inactivate this option. If you have missed it then google will succeed claiming authorization.
More importantly, remember those agreements we check in(agree) before subscribing, purchasing, accessing etc with most of the websites, those legal docs do take away most of the rights.
However, I believe there is always a way for the right legal brain. Lets see how this one turns up.
Bottomline, online laws need to be reformed. There needs to be an online legal entity with authorizing power from most of the countries to regulate this world web.
Thanks
Avish Sharma
Blog: www.prodigy-legal.blogspot.com
www.ProdigyLegal.com
- providing cost benefits to law firms.
Posted by: Avish | Jul 17, 2008 1:19:13 AM
Yes, I agree with above comment. Google provides you with the option of showing your ads on its search network, or on its much wider (and far flung) content network.
Posted by: Amy Campbell | Jul 21, 2008 8:09:23 AM
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