vincevincevince - 3:37 am on May 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

- Advertisers who have lost hard cash should be reimbursed in hard cash Not sure how you can reach that conclusion since the original intent of any monies paid to Google was for the purpose of advertising. They will simply re-apply those lost monies towards advertising in which you were subjected to fraud.

What the intent is depends soley upon the advertiser's intentions. In my case I purchase adwords based upon the result I wish to obtain (sales, subscriptions, etc.) not upon an number of clicks or a fixed ad-spend. If I have spent $1000 on genuine adwords clicks to obtain the result I required, and have been billed an additional $200 for click fraud clicks that have added no value then I certainly never had any intent to spend that $200 on advertising and would not have spent it even if there was no click-fraud, my result-based-target being met.

If an advertiser's spend represents 1% of all advertising spend at Google during that time

That's not how I read it - it seems to me that the pro-rata was based upon the advertising spend of the class members who file claims and not of total worldwide advertising spend on Google adwords. i.e. if only 25% of remain in the class and bother to file a claim those remaining will be getting 4x their share.