Alert Blog Reviews

In the “Finally!” department, Google is taking legal action against advertisers who used Google’s name and logos to promote their get-rich-quick scams. The “Make Money on Google” ads were rampant in both search and display advertising in the first half of this year. Google cracked down on the search ads in July, but naturally, the scams and the sites continued to flourish. Google, like a good trademark holder, has finally come to its senses and is now suing the scammers for using its name in vain. They’ve filed suit (PDF) against Pacific WebWorks and other unnamed defendants for a number of counts, including trademark infringement, trademark dilution, cyberpiracy and unfair competition. The scams worked by advertising that buyers could “make money from Google.” The buyers purchased a “free” kit to teach them how to do this, paying a nominal fee and S&H. However, Google contends in the suit, buyers received nothing of value and were subjected to high recurring charges on their cards. Some buyers even contacted Google for refunds or to stop the recurring fees—another reason why Google feels compelled to sue now. Pacific WebWorks was slapped with a class action suit last month in Illinois, but the suit sought no injunction to stop their advertising. Google’s, filed in Utah, naturally does petition for an injunction to stop the false advertising until the trial can ascertain whether the claims are true. The unnamed defendants (listed as “Does 1-50″ in the complaint) are kind of like placeholder defendants. Google admits in the complaint that they don’t know everyone who’s running this scam, but that they will amend the complaint once they do. “Upon information and belief,” Google says that the other defendants are materially connected with Pacific WebWorks, though they appear to operate as separate companies. The separate entities use the same website templates, testimonials and other information to purvey their scams. What do you think? Will Google win? And what took them so long?

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Google Sues Make Money with Google Scams

For this post, I need two volunteers! Let’s take this announcement from Google: …we’ve decided to allow publishers to limit the number of accesses under the First Click Free policy to five free accesses per user each day . This change applies to both Google News publishers as well as websites indexed in Google’s Web Search. We hope that this encourages even more publishers to open up more content to users around the world! And yes, you sir. The Financial Times report on how much news scraping exists on the web: The study of 101,000 articles published by 157 newspapers found that more than 75,000 sites reused 112,000 almost exact copies without authorisation, and a further 520,000 articles in part… The study found Google accounted for 53 per cent of the advertising being run alongside unlicensed stories … I will now combine these two articles into an incredible–or incredulous–observation. Is it pure coincidence that on the day News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch was in Washington telling the FTC about the need to reform "fair use" laws to prevent the "theft" of its content, Attributor pulls out some heavy numbers in support and Google decides to bend a little? I think not! Forget the fact that Bing is rumored to be courting the newspaper industry to dump Google, the search engine plans to lose a significant slice of revenue, if the publishing industry faces any kind of mass reform. Think about it, Google offers to change the "First Click Free" terms in order to save the AdSense revenue it makes from bloggers, and the more nefarious scrapers. It’s a small sacrifice, right? You’ve heard of the expression "an irresistible force meets an immovable object," right? News Corp. is about to meet Google head-on! Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Google Offers Newspapers the First 5 Clicks Free to Keep AdSense Scrapers Alive

At one point in time US President John F. Kennedy triumphantly declared “Ich bin ein Berliner!” in a speech to the German people. Now the debate rages on as to whether the president proclaimed he was a Berlin citizen or a donut but that’s for another blog. Today though we learn from TechCrunch Europe that Eric Schmidt from Google may need to head to Deutschland to proclaim that he is one of the good guys as there are calls to ban Google Analytics from sites with a .de extension. Several federal and regional government officials in Germany are trying to put a ban on Google Analytics, the search giant’s free software product that allows website owners and publishers to get detailed statistics about the number, whereabouts and search behavior of their visitors (and much more). According to an article in today’s Zeit Online (poor Google translation here), multiple federal and state government officials charged with guarding over national data protection are convinced that Google Analytics is against the law in Germany and are mulling imposing fines on companies who use the service to gather detailed stats based on their website visitors’ usage patterns without the explicit consent of those visitors. What is probably just as interesting in this quote is the swipe taken at Google’s translation service . I woudn’t know a good German translation if it came up and smacked me in the head (apologies to Herr Manger who was my German teacher for two years in HS. Nothing stuck other than “Ich habe keine idee” which I think means “I have no idea” – NOTE- This was confirmed by Google Translate ) So apparently this isn’t the first time that the German government has voiced these concerns with most of their worry pointed at healthcare data and other sensitive areas. Interestingly enough some of larger media organizations use Google Analytics so this should be fun to watch if it actually turns into anything. So what’s at risk for those using Google Analytics One German lawyer that gets cited in the article says the penalties could amount up to €50,000 (about $75,000) per website that uses Google Analytics to keep track of its visitors’ usage patterns. Google’s take. Well, they disagree of course. What else would you expect? Google Germany’s Per Meyerdierks, however, says the company is well within its rights to process user data in the United States because it respects the Safe Harbour treaty between the EU and the USA. He argues that an opt-out would be entirely unnecessary, and that users always have the option to refuse cookies anyway. Now my question to the German government is the following. If you are uncomfortable with Google having this kind of data for many companies what about the individual companies that are collecting the same data using something else and not nearly as secure as Google is?

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Ich bin ein Googler!

What is it with airlines? If they’re not breaking guitars , their pilots are missing airports , or they’re berating people that are trying to help them. Well, we have one more reputation disaster to add to the list, courtesy of American Airlines. You may recall the open letter web designer Dusting Curtis wrote to the airline. In it, Curtis suggested that AA was losing millions because of its poorly designed web site. He even went as far as suggesting a new design for the site. Shortly after, one of AA’s designers took it upon himself to reply and explain the complexities of AA web site design decisions. His reply was open, honest…radically transparent. American Airlines has allegedly fired him for it! This may have happened back in May, but it’s only just come to light that the AA designer was apparently fired an hour after he wrote his reply. AA searched their exchange database for the text I posted, found the guy, and fired Mr. X on the spot. From what I have learned, they also threatened him with legal action if he spoke to me again. Apparently he broke his non-disclosure agreement by discussing the design process at AA. OK, so maybe he shouldn’t have broken his NDA with the airline. But, maybe AA shouldn’t have been so near-sighted and pedantic about its employee policies. Surely the airline is aware that it’s industry hardly has the best reputation for caring about its customers. Heck, even Jet Blue–the poster child of airline awesomeness–has screwed-up royally in the past. In some ways, you can’t blame American Airlines. It is completely ignorant of how customers want to interact with the airline. We don’t want to hand flight attendants slips of paper that say “well done”–something AA encourages me to do as a frequent flier–we want to engage with the airline. We want it to do better, and we have ideas. Ideas about clean blankets, baggage fees, and yes, web site design. How does AA marry its apparent openness on Twitter , with this crackdown on a real employee that wants to help? Yes, you should have guidelines in place, but those guidelines should be designed to encourage thoughtful customer interaction, not prevent it! If we hear that you’re firing employees because of their transparency, how are we supposed to take your official social networking efforts seriously? What, do we now assume that everything that is shared on Twitter or Facebook is nothing more than sterile, PR sanctioned, sound bites? The airline industry may well be the very last to “get” the concept of Radically Transparent . When they do finally have that “aha!” moment, we’ll know that we’ve finally entered the age of open, honest, dialogs. Andy Beal – AA Platinum Card Holder; Million Mile Flier. ( via )

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American Airlines Fires Employee for Being Transparent

After getting an extension earlier this month, Google has finally proposed another settlement in the case over its book deal . The new settlement, filed on Friday, might still allow Google to provide access to in-copyright, out-of-print books. The new settlement may also help them to sidestep problems with copyright laws in some European countries. The deal will also remove a clause that some believed meant that no other retailer would be able to get as good a deal as Google for those works. The proposed settlement also takes care of so-called “orphan” works—works where the copyright holder is unknown or unlocateable. The settlement provides for appointing a trustee to sell the rights to other companies and to guard the proceeds for unknown holders for up to 10 years. For those holders who still haven’t been located, the funds will be donated to charity. The DoJ, which effectively killed the last settlement attempt , says they’re still looking into the deal. The newly proposed settlement, of course, restarts the judicial approval process as well. Judge

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Google Proposes New Book Deal Settlement

Usually, when we see Facebook and arrest in a story, the story is filed under The World’s Dumbest Criminals. Like the guy that made fun of his DUI charges by posting pictures of himself in a jailbird costume. Or the burglar who logged into his Facebook account at the victim’s home. Or the woman who violated a restraining order by poking her victim . But this time, Facebook is finally saving someone’s bacon. Or, oddly enough, his pancakes. As the New York Times says , The message on Rodney Bradford’s Facebook page, posted at 11:49 a.m. on Oct. 17, asked where his pancakes were. The words were typed from a computer in his father’s apartment in Harlem. At the time, the sentence, written in street slang, was just another navel-gazing, cryptic Facebook status update — meaningless to anyone besides Mr. Bradford. But when Mr. Bradford, 19, was arrested the next day as a suspect in a robbery at the Farragut Houses in Brooklyn, where he lives, the words took on greater importance. They became his alibi. One minute after his status update, someone in Brooklyn was mugged. The article isn’t exactly clear on how Bradford was named as a suspect in the mugging, but he was arrested for the crime, even though his father and step-mother both said he was with them in Harlem (and Harlem != Brooklyn, if you’re not familiar with NYC). When Bradford’s lawyer told the Brooklyn DA about the status update, the DA’s office subpoenaed Facebook’s records to verify that he wasn’t at the scene of the crime. The IP address resolved to Bradford’s father’s home—and the charges against Bradford were dropped. The ADA realizes that anyone with his username and password could have posted the status update, but, as Bradford’s lawyer says, “This implies a level of criminal genius that you would not expect from a young boy like this; he is not Dr. Evil.” So it just goes to show: maybe all those pointless status updates aren’t so pointless after all. What do you think? Can status updates (with IP records) be taken as legal alibis?

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Facebook Keeps Someone Out of Jail (For Once)

About a year ago, Reframe It launched a product that allowed web users to add public (or private) comments on any part of any website, using a side pane in the browser. According to the users’ choice, the comments would be available for later visitors to that website to see and respond to. Six weeks ago, Google launched SideWiki which . . . does the same thing (without the privacy options). A coincidence? Possibly. But Reframe It co-founder and CEO Bobby Fishkin believes the similarities extend beyond just the ideas for the products. He tells eWEEK that even the layout of the buttons of the two services is strikingly similar. And the evidence he offers goes deeper: A Reframe It board member recommended the service to a Google exec in July 2008 Within a few months, at least six Google employees registered for the service. Days before Sidewiki’s launch, Google tried to hire Reframe It co-founder and lead engineer Ben Taitelbaum. Of course, all we have for for all this is Fishkin’s word (though I assume Taitelbaum and the board member would testify as well). Fishkin says Reframe It has a patent pending—and the law says they can amend that application, including to specifically cover the aspects they think Google might be copying. Once the patent is officially issued, they can sue for infringement. On Google Watch , eWEEK reporter Clint Boulton assembled the side-by-side comparison of the two services: Reframe It Vs. Google Sidewiki – Naturally, neither Reframe It nor Sidewiki can claim to be the first web annotation service. However, depending on exactly what their patent will cover, Reframe It may still be able to claim Google violates their patent. (However, at present Reframe It is focusing on launching its 2.0 version, and couldn’t take the distraction, Fishkin says.) What do you think? Should Reframe It sue Google once it’s patent is issued? Or is this just a coincidence? via

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You Decide: Should Reframe It Sue Google?