December 6, 2006 at 13:33The investigation against click fraud ended in nothing
In March 2003, federal agents arrested an American who extorted money from Google using click fraud.
A 32-year-old programmer named Michael Anthony Bradley said at the time that he had created a program that could click invisibly on contextual advertising and contacted Google with the threat that he would publish this program under the name Google Clique on the Internet if he didn’t will pay a ransom of $ 150 thousand
Google invited Bradley to an “interview”, during which intelligence agents were on duty outside the wall and listened carefully to the conversation. At a certain point, when the fact of extortion became apparent, they appeared on the scene and made an arrest. A criminal case was opened against the guy, and Google actively distributed comments to the press. It looked like Michael Bradley would be the first person in the world to be jailed for fraud: he was facing up to 20 years in prison. None of this happened.
Now, almost three years later, it became known that the criminal case was closed., and this is done without undue noise, in absolute silence. The case file for two and a half years seems to be classified. None of Google’s official representatives publish public comments on this subject: neither about click fraud methods, nor about potential click fraud victims, nor about the availability of special programs on the Internet to “click” ads. Obviously, he does not want to divulge the details of this process. According to experts, the most likely reason for closing the case was that Google refused to help the investigation , because click fraud recognition algorithms belong to the category of Google’s most protected secrets.
In connection with all this, experts have doubts: is Google really fighting click fraud? After all, everyone understands that prominent Google programmers could easily develop methods for filtering doorways. Why is this not done? Is the situation really consistent with this comic ?
Click fraud is considered the Achilles heel of global online advertising. Most independent experts who study this market agree that between 10% and 15% of paid clicks are "fake" . Thus, in the American advertising market with an annual turnover of more than $ 10 billion, the click fraud industry receives at least $ 1 billion per year.
A 32-year-old programmer named Michael Anthony Bradley said at the time that he had created a program that could click invisibly on contextual advertising and contacted Google with the threat that he would publish this program under the name Google Clique on the Internet if he didn’t will pay a ransom of $ 150 thousand
Google invited Bradley to an “interview”, during which intelligence agents were on duty outside the wall and listened carefully to the conversation. At a certain point, when the fact of extortion became apparent, they appeared on the scene and made an arrest. A criminal case was opened against the guy, and Google actively distributed comments to the press. It looked like Michael Bradley would be the first person in the world to be jailed for fraud: he was facing up to 20 years in prison. None of this happened.
Now, almost three years later, it became known that the criminal case was closed., and this is done without undue noise, in absolute silence. The case file for two and a half years seems to be classified. None of Google’s official representatives publish public comments on this subject: neither about click fraud methods, nor about potential click fraud victims, nor about the availability of special programs on the Internet to “click” ads. Obviously, he does not want to divulge the details of this process. According to experts, the most likely reason for closing the case was that Google refused to help the investigation , because click fraud recognition algorithms belong to the category of Google’s most protected secrets.
In connection with all this, experts have doubts: is Google really fighting click fraud? After all, everyone understands that prominent Google programmers could easily develop methods for filtering doorways. Why is this not done? Is the situation really consistent with this comic ?
Click fraud is considered the Achilles heel of global online advertising. Most independent experts who study this market agree that between 10% and 15% of paid clicks are "fake" . Thus, in the American advertising market with an annual turnover of more than $ 10 billion, the click fraud industry receives at least $ 1 billion per year.