Benjamin Edelman, assistant professor at Harvard Business School, claims Google and partners are inflating PPC conversion rates and increasing advertiser cost via four specific channels, including Google’s own Chrome browser.
Google makes money by charging advertisers every time a user clicks on a Google advertisement, but in the instances described and documented by Edelman, he makes it appear Google and partners are colluding to intercept traffic to websites that would be navigated directly (and for free) rather than by searching.
Harvard Business School professor Benjamin Edelman believes Google is profiting from and encouraging typosquatting by placing ads on trademark infringing made-for-AdSense websites. As co-counsel in a class action suit, Edelman suggests Google could be making money from a million domains or more.
If you make less than $2 million per month, and can deal with doing something that is illegal and perhaps "morally annoying," have we got a career for you: typosquatter. As a development in a Dell lawsuit shows, it's an extremely profitable position.
Avi Wilensky, a friend of mine, recently got a cease and desist letter from Realogy Corporation because his Google broad match ads for Mark David NY ended up on a dirty Google syndication partner site.
Four major domainer firms are being sued for filling (otherwise unused) sites with ads. One other corporation - Google - has also been named in the class action complaint; Google provided the ads.
Microsoft swaggered out of Redmond today with steely eyes and leathery skin, heeled with a pair of six shooters aimed at cybersquatters - four of them Microsoft knows by name, and 217 of them it doesn't. In the saddlebag, software for anybody else with the guts to chase these dogs down.
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