Google Taken To Court over Messy AdSense Service; Launches New Format

Google is taken to court by Bravacorp, a San Francisco company that demands $250,000 in damages because it took 100 hours to place and review AdSense advertisements on its website and because Google subsequently took its site down.

by Angelique van Engelen

The search engine giant accused the website owner of click fraud. Bravacorp says, it had only clicked on the AdSense links on its site to verify that they did not support competing sites’ advertisements. The AdSense terms of service prohibit customers from clicking on AdSense ads on their own site.

Google has been quoted in US papers including eWeek.com as saying, the suit is without merit and that the company would defend itself vigorously. Bravacorp was reportedly unavailable for comment.

Meanwhile, Google has accompanied the launch of its latest format of AdSense advertisements with a few gimmicks to underscore the product’s usability. The 200 x 200 size format supports text, image and video ads. The company informs clients that the new format is one of two key improvements to AdSense “that came about directly from publisher feedback”.

Google also made alterations to the usability of its Channels page, which appears when users click on their AdSense Setup tab. “Besides cleaning up the design by housing each product on its own sub-tab, we've also made it easier for you to take action on your channels. Just select the checkbox next to a channel and then choose to activate, deactivate, remove, or rename the channel you've selected”.