Google Sued For Click Fraud By Seattle Locksmith

Mediapost reports that Google has been sued by 123 Lock & Key, a Seattle based locksmith company over click fraud. Mediapost said this is the first click fraud lawsuit against Google in five years. In fact, this is the first time Google was sued since settling a click fraud case in 2006 for $90 million.

Back then, Nicole Wong, associate general counsel at Google, told Danny Sullivan that there is really nothing preventing the constant lawsuits over click fraud. However, the last time they were sued was in 2006 so Wong’s approach of making sure their “advertisers are happy” has been working.

“What we will do going forward is to continue to fight click fraud or invalid clicks to ensure our advertisers are happy,” Wong explained in 2006. “We’re getting better at it and we are more proactive than we were when we launched the program. We take that responsibility seriously.”

Google told Mediapost they have yet to be served by the lawsuit and could not comment yet. They did say they “devoted significant resources to protect advertisers from invalid clicks.” He added that the company “will continue to fight click fraud and work with our advertisers to investigate every click fraud claim and credit them retroactively, as appropriate.”