Google faces lawsuit for Adsense fraud in US

An American company has filed a lawsuit against Google accusing the tech giant of engaging in fraud by cancelling their AdSense accounts just before they were due to pay out, according to a report by Cnet. The case was reportedly filed by Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro on behalf of Free Range Content, the California-based owner of Repost.us. It reportedly relies in part on recent anonymous accusations that Google developed an AdSense fraud scheme in 2009 to prevent publishers from collecting money that Google owed them. Google's actions constitute breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, unjust enrichment, and violation of the California Unfair Competition Law, the report added. According to the filing with the US District Court for the Norther District of California the lawsuit seeks to take class action status where all US-based AdSense users who face similar issues can be represented. Last month, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) had initiated a probe against Google to investigate claim made by Delhi-based Vishal Gupta who owns remote technology support service firms. In this lawsuit payment of $310,000 was made to Google by Gupta for its AdWords programme. In opposition to the lawsuit, Google claimed Gupta's ads violated its user safety policy and hence blocked his AdWords account. He also alleged that AdWords policies were not transparent and unclear. AdSense is one of the major advertiser partner networks for Google that accounts for about quarter of Google’s annual revenue.