Google will have to pay $100 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed 14 years ago against Google AdWords (now Google Ads). In 2011, advertisers accused the tech giant of charging for clicks on ads placed outside the geographic locations they specified.
What happened?
Google violated California’s Unfair Competition Law by misleading advertisers about where their ads would appear and failed to meet its obligations to provide users with discounts under the Smart Pricing program.
“This case involved advertising product features we changed more than a decade ago, and we are pleased to have resolved it,” said Google spokesman Jose Castañeda.
The settlement was reportedly reached after an “extensive” review of the facts, which the plaintiffs’ lawyers said involved more than 910,000 pages of documents and “several terabytes” of click data from Google. The list of victims included advertisers who used Google’s AdWords program between June 1, 2009, and December 13, 2012.
The $100 million will be split between them. The plaintiffs’ legal representatives can get up to 33% of the settlement, with an additional $4.2 million going toward legal costs. However, the settlement is still subject to court approval.
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