oogle company will soon pay about $100 million in order to close down the long-lasting class action lawsuit which claims that the giant has charged a higher
price to different Google advertisers because it failed to offer the discounts that were initially promised. More than that, it seems that, as stated in this advertising lawsuit, Google made these advertisers pay for click ads that were outside of the specified geographic areas targeted by them.
This Google advertising lawsuit was initially filed in 2011, about 14 years ago, and targeted Google Adwords, which in the meantime changed its name to Google Ads. So, this Google lawsuit claims that the giant managed to violate the law called California’s Unfair Competition, by giving false information about where certain ads would be shown.
Also, the giant company didn’t exactly respect its initial promise and did not provide advertisers with a “Smart Pricing” discount as promised. As advertisers state, when they were part of this Google AdWords program, the giant purposely manipulated the formula of the Smart Pricing program in order to remove the guaranteed discounts.
“This case was about ad product features we changed over a decade ago, and we’re pleased it’s resolved,” José Castañeda, Google’s spokesperson, stated for The Verge.
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It should be mentioned that this Google lawsuit includes all the advertisers that were part of the AdWords program between the first of January 2004 and 13 December, 2012.
When requested to comment on this situation, Google refused to give a response.
It should be mentioned that the judging expenses will also include the lawyers who will probably obtain 33% of the total settlement fund, along with $4.2 million for other costs.
But why did it take so long for this advertising lawsuit to be settled? Well, according to the published court papers, this Google lawsuit lasted this long because all the participating parties provided different evidence, which included more than 910,000 pages of documents. Also, the parties offered many terabytes that included click data from Google. All of these were part of six mediation sessions before deciding on the final agreement.
Stay tuned for more updates!
