Eventually, the price that the advertiser is willing to pay for the conversion will decline, because the advertiser will realize that these are bad clicks, in other words, the value of the ad declines, so over some amount of time, the system is in-fact, self-correcting. In fact, there is a perfect economic solution which is to let it happen.
Was quite surprised when I read this. I am not sure whether this was already posted
[blogs.zdnet.com...]
Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety
His job at google is to create "trust", he is also a world champion debater, surely his perspective on the context of Schmidts comments may be skewed a little bit.
I guess advertisers might be a little more interested in the issue than publishers. ;)
[edited by: TypicalSurfer at 1:47 am (utc) on July 18, 2006]
If she didn't mean to be dishonest, then she had a selective memory or wasn't really listening.
I'm sure Eric won't be making statements like that again, clearly he stated that there is a perfect economic solution and that is to let it (click fraud) happen. I'd say that kind of statement irregardless of the ensuing damage control is quite provocative and does little to engender trust in google.
BTW, I was looking at a thread about this on Threadwatch a few minutes ago, and I found it interesting that so many people persisted in believing and repeating the lie after they had been told the truth, and after they had been given an opportunity to hear for themselves what Schmidt said. It's like the Swift Boat episode, which proved that some people are extremely gullible and others exploit that gullibility to further their own agendas.
Fraud has been in the "conversation" for a long time and google could put it all to bed with transparency, so until then we merely speculate "context".
No one outside of google knows what they are doing to combat fraud, so we just speculate as usual. I wouldn't be so quick to call the original article writer (or anyone else) a liar since you really don't know what goes on with their system.
[edited by: TypicalSurfer at 3:01 am (utc) on July 18, 2006]
Schmidt's comment was perfectly reasonable in the context that it was used, and nobody would have batted an eyelash if the blogger hadn't misrepresented his (and Google's) stance on click fraud. Schmidt specifically stated in his original comments that Google didn't accept that economic solution and did, in fact, go after click fraud.
True, however I'd think he would be a bit more careful with his remarks, seeing as there are click fraud lawsuits in progress against G, and the markets get nervous about exec team members' comments (even if taken out of context).
The guy's smart, and he may have overestimated the intelligence of his audience. :-)
Maybe. However, IMO, a public figure can never be too careful with his/her comments. According to some blogs I've seen, there are some paid clickers who've now taken up ES' remarks as a slogan. If this becomes news, it could be big PR problem for G. (Especially since they report earnings tomorrow.)
The guy's smart, and he may have overestimated the intelligence of his audience. :-)
Yeah, like the Enron bunch, The smartest guys in the room, everyone was hornswoggled into believing they were "smart", they were just fraudsters. They did everything in a "blackbox" fashion as well. So you have a point EVF, the average audience will buy into anything.
Ask specifically what google does to combat click fraud and you'll get no answers, just trust the men behind the curtain because they are "smart".
