Google Finds No Data Misuse In Shoemoney Trademark Case

May 18, 2009 at 5:59pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Earlier this month, my Why Hasn’t Google Cleared, Fired Or Suspended Accused AdWords Employee? article asked why Google hadn’t yet publicly commented about accusations that one of their employees may have abused the AdWords system for his own benefit. Now the company is speaking up — and saying it has found no wrongdoing.

Google’s sent me this statement:

The privacy and security of our users and advertisers’ account information is a top priority for us, and our internal policies prohibit any use of non-public advertiser data for personal gain. After a thorough investigation, we found no indication that any employee purposefully tampered with or circumvented any of those policies, processes or procedures, including our trademark filtering process. Due to an unrelated human error, however, some ads with the “Shoemoney” trademark in the text were unintentionally allowed to run. The error has since been corrected, and the ads ran only for a short time.

Talking with the company a bit further, it stressed that the human error was on the part of another AdWords employee, not Keyen Farrell, who is the defendant in the case Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker has filed involving the use of his trademarks in AdWords copy.

Taking over a month to investigate the situation and make this needed comment still seems a long time, but at least we got there in the end.

Meanwhile, Schoemaker informs us today that that the defense has withdraw its motion for dismissal, so the case will stay in Nebraska and move into the discovery process.

Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series, maintains a personal blog called Daggle and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan.

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davethetruth, May 18th, 2009 at 9:13 pm ET:

Wow, big surprise that Google wasn’t able to find any illegal activity. Kind of reminds me of all the times they haven’t been able to find any CLICK FRAUD, price gouging or unfair business practices lol!

Got to love when the corporate monster shows its teeth!

Google Finds No Data Misuse In Shoemoney Trademark Case

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