1. Click Fraud Collusion

A consortium of advertisers (led by Lane's Collectibles) have filed a class action suit in Arkansas against Yahoo, Google and 9 other search engines in February, accusing the Search companies of over pricing ads and colluding to keep ad prices high. The lawsuit also alleges that Internet search engine companies knowingly charged for fraudulent clicks.

In the pay-per-click model that Google and Yahoo use, advertisers pay each time a user "clicks through" on an ad listed alongside search engine results. But the number of clicks with ill intents is rising.  A fraudulent clicker can rack up fees for a business rival or try to generate ad revenue for himself. Last November Google filed a suit against Auctions Expert International LLC for clicking on ads Google supplied to the company's site.

Click fraud has become a growing problem in the search industry. Google even said it is "the biggest threat to the Internet economy." Google and Yahoo won't give a public estimate of the number of bad clicks. Some people estimate that between 5% and 13% of all clicks are fraudulent and for some key words on certain search engines as many as 80% of clicks might be fraudulent. Google refunds advertisers for "unusual clicks" and "invalid click activity".

Lan's filed the lawsuit February 4 and the defendants on March 30 asked that the case be moved from state court to federal court.

• April 5, 2005: Google and Yahoo! accused of click fraud collusion, The Register:
  "Google, Yahoo! and other players in the search business have become embroiled in a lawsuit which involves overcharging for pay-per-click online advertising."

• April 5, 2005: Google & Co. im Zusammenhang mit Klickbetrug verklagt, Heise:
  "In den USA sind insgesamt elf namhafte Internet-Firmen -- darunter Google, Yahoo, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Lycos und Walt Disney Online -- wegen angeblicher Unregelmäßigkeiten bei der Vermarktung von Online-Anzeigen verklagt worden."

 

2. "G-mail" becomes "Google Mail" in Germany

Google has changed the name of their German email service, because Daniel Giersch owns the rights to "G-Mail" in Germany and has no plans to release the naming rights to Google. Google will now call the German service "Google Mail".
 

• May 13, 2005: New name after Trademark Dispute: ‘Gmail’ is now called ‘Google Mail’ in Germany, Markenbusiness News:
  "Google’s introduction of the email service ‘Gmail’ already had a bad start."

 

3. What happened to "We are not evil" - Google v. Froogles

The website froogles.com - registered in December 2000 by Mr. Wolfe- seeks to attract "frugal" shoppers by offering a wide variety of quality merchandise at discounted or sale prices. In 2002 Google launched a comparison-shopping site of its own, called Froogle.com. In Google's pending application to register the mark FROOGLE in the United States Patent and Trademark Office ("PTO"), Mr. Wolfe filed a Notice of Opposition on March 24, 2004, thus angering Google.

Google asked an arbitration panel of the ICANN (the domain name organization) to not allow to use the domain because it was "confusingly similar" to Google. The panel ruled in Wolfe's favour. According to the panel, the froogles.com domain name is not confusingly similar to the GOOGLE mark.  The dissimilar letters in the domain name are sufficiently different to make it distinguishable from the GOOGLE mark because the domain name creates an entirely new word and conveys an entirely singular meaning from the mark. The decision can be found at: http://www.arb-forum.com/domains/decisions/275419.htm.

Google now has filed suit against Froogles in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn alleging trademark infringment. In the suit, Google claims that it is the "senior user of marks that incorporate the formative " -- OOGLE" for Internet search services."

The Complaint can be found at: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/googlevfroogles.pdf