Double-click issue - surely $90m is too little

Reading into Tuzhilin's report

[chrisk999]

Seeing as the deadline is fast approaching for the click-fraud case, I wonder if anyone else has views on the size of the double-click issue that was resolved in March 2005 (i.e. charging twice for a double click on an ad).

In Tuzhilin's report [googleblog.blogspot.com], he states (p30):

It turned out that the change in the doubleclick policy (i.e., not to charge advertisers for the immediate second click in a doubleclick) had non-trivial financial implications for Google. Being a publicly traded company at that time, this change would have had a noticeable effect on Google’s total revenues with corresponding implications for the financial performance of the company.

If the management of the company had 'legitimate concerns' (p.31), I sincerely doubt that the impact of only charging for the first click was only worth $90m looking back to 2002.

Is this a valid reason alone for rejecting the class action, and do you think that the number of people that will/have rejected the case will prove sufficient to launch a second one?

[BigDave]

That is why companies are willing to settle, they are able to get away with paying a bit less than if they were to lose at trial.

The reason that plaintiffs are willing to settle is that they would have to prove their actual losses AND they would have to prove that Google was required to refund that money, which is not always as easy as you would think.

Real big-money lawsuits don't work the same way they do in TV court. A lot of times the easy, smaller settlement is the best bet.