This company wants $750,000 dollars from a mother and two sons

Two Canadians along with their mother have been sued by Microsoft for “click fraud”. Canadians, with their mothers – who thought they could be “damaging to Microsoft’s reputation?”

Microsoft claimed that the family was running two websites, one about auto insurance and the other about a massively multiplayer online game (World of Warcraft).

In the Internet Marketing industry, PPC stands for the “Pay Per Click” ad scheme, in which you as the advertiser make companies like Google and MSN display your ads in relevant sites; and pay them each time your ads are clicked. The amount you pay depends on the competition for your keywords.

Microsoft maintains that this Canadian family has created a scheme in which they wrote a script that imitates a person browsing the Internet and clicking the ads of their competitors. So their competitors have to pay for those clicks, and they gain nothing in return because the “visitor” is not actually interested in them.

Sure it’s their right to sue for as much as they want, the eventual amount will be decided by the court anyway, and that’s if Microsoft wins the case. But fuck it, man, $750,000? What damage could this little Canadian family have done to you that demands a $750,000?

Microsoft says “their revenues went down and their reputation was damaged”. Oh fuck. A Canadian mother and two sons damaged the otherwise completely stellar reputation of Microsoft.