Forbes informs us that Google threw a party at its Mountain View, Calif. palace on Tuesday, aptly calling it "The Google Dance." As cute as that sounds, and as much fun as drinking, dancing and
karaoke-ing the night away with Google folk might be, we didn't go (they invited us, of course). Turns out it was a rough next day anyway, particularly for CEO Eric Schmidt, who wasn't in nearly as
good a mood speaking at the Search Engine Strategies conference. Hangover and such, right? Or maybe it was just the barrage of questions about click fraud (or maybe both)? Google must be getting
awfully tired of evading questions about its most important issue. The company's quick-fix click fraud app apparently isn't enough for advertisers (it doesn't actually reveal anything), nor is its
recently announced IAB initiative with Yahoo, Microsoft and IAC's Ask.com. Everyone still wants to know just how much click fraud occurs within Google's system. "We don't want to give out the
details," Schmidt said. "But we believe we have it under control, and we believe it is getting better. Though, we don't know what we don't know--we only know what we can detect." Maybe Google really
doesn't know. Nevertheless, it's become clear that Google isn't talking about how much click fraud it detects, how it catches bad guys, how it plans to stamp out the problem in the future, or most
importantly for advertisers, how much spending is wasted due to click fraud. The company would only dismiss recent claims by third-party auditors that click fraud rates could be as high as 35
percent. Third-party auditors say they want an "open forum," since their research can only be a rough estimate without cooperation from Google and Yahoo.
Read the whole story at Forbes.com »
