Korean website operator to sue Google Korea

A Korean website, humoruniv.com, will sue Google Korea over "unpaid advertisement revenue," the company`s CEO Lee Jung-min said yesterday.

Lee claimed that the global Web search giant Google Inc. did not pay his company due amounts of advertisement revenue, generated by using Google`s ad serving program AdSense during the October-December period last year.

Website owners can register with Google`s AdSense and enable text, image and video advertisements on their sites. Then, they split advertisement revenue with Google based on click through numbers.

According to Lee, Google unilaterally canceled the contract with humoruniv.com in December after the discovery of "illegal clicks" on the ad. Illegal clicks refer to repetitive clicks from the same computer or same internet protocol address, possibly by competitors, the website operator or a website visitor. However, Lee says Google has provided no evidence of illegal clicks.

"We haven`t received three-month-due revenue of 23 million won ($26,000), but Google doesn`t talk to us anymore," said Lee in a telephone interview with The Korea herald.

"In the lawsuit, I`m considering seeking the unpaid ad revenue only, even though the reputation of our website might have been tainted because of the illegal click claims. Even if I lose the legal battle with Google Korea, the lawsuit will be meaningful in itself because this is an unfair business," he said.

Google Korea`s spokesperson, however, said it has not received any official contact from humoruniv.com and declined to comment further.

Earlier on Monday, the Fair Trade Commission ordered Google Inc. to revise or delete unfair clauses in its AdSense advertisement contracts with website operators, citing the clauses allow Google to "one-sidedly cancel advertisement deals" and not guarantee returns to website operators.

The FTC said Google Korea has expressed its intent to revise the noted clauses in AdSense contracts.

The corrective order precedes an FTC`s fair trade investigation of local internet portal operators, scheduled to begin in March.

(yoonmi@heraldm.com)





By Kim Yoon-mi