Google has agreed to pay $3.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit that accuses the search-engine giant of tricking people registering for AdWords into paying for ads that run on its “inferior” content network. The proposed Google AdWords class action lawsuit settlement affects all persons or entities that advertised on Google between October of 2007 and July of 2009 and didn’t realize they were being opted-in to Google’s AdSense network by default.
In order to advertise on Google, advertisers must sign up with Google’s AdWords program. According to the AdWords class action lawsuit, Google fails to inform advertisers during this sign-up process that if they leave an input form (which says “optional” next to it) blank for advertising on third-party websites, that they will be billed for their ads appearing on these sites.
Florida retailer Largo Cargo filed the class action lawsuit earlier this year, asserting that it intended to opt out of AdSense during the registration process by not responding to the question of how much they would be willing to pay per click for ads placed on Google’s content network. Largo Cargo claims in the class action that since there is no option to opt out of content ads during the AdWords registration process, it leaves advertisers to reasonably believe that they are opting out of having their ads placed on the content network, when in fact they being charged for content ads on third-party websites that are “demonstrably inferior to ads appearing on search results pages.”
The Google CPC content class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of all persons or entities in similar situations who bid on a keyword through AdWords, left the “CPC content bid” input blank, and were charged for content ads. According to news reports, the settlement agreement was quietly filed with the court in October seeking approval. No information on the settlement benefits to class members has been released yet, but we will keep you informed when it becomes public.
In the meantime, check out the Largo Cargo v. Google class action lawsuit complaint here for more details on the charges against Google.
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