It's hard to beat a good conspiracy.

[geekerati]

Some of you may get a laugh out of this...what will they think up next?

How To Destroy Google With $100 Million?

Too Much Free Time Contributed by Mike on Thursday, February 3rd, 2005 @ 03:21AM

From the fun-for-the-whole-family dept.
Tom Foremski has come up with what he believes is a huge "vulnerability" in Google's AdWords business model. The business model works because the clicks on the ads are legitimate. If the clicks aren't, then the model becomes troublesome -- which is why Google and others are so concerned about click fraud and look for ways to stop it. So, Foremski's "atom bomb" for Google would be if a random billionaire offered $100 million to the first person to click on a specific Google ad -- without telling anyone (of course) what ad it is. In other words, this billionaire will have given millions of people the incentive to commit clickfraud -- destroying the basis under which the AdWords system works. Advertisers would, in theory, demand their money back or would simply kill their Google ads. It's an interesting idea, and we all know someone who certainly has $100 million lying around and wants to defeat Google. However, there are some problems with the idea. First, in doing so, whatever random "billionaire" carried out this offering would open him or herself up to a tremendous lawsuit from Google. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the problem goes away the second the first person finds the ad and wins the money. Stability is restored, and the system goes on, until the billionaire decides to play the game again -- but that can certainly get expensive fast. While it's an interesting idea, it's not clear that Google has much to worry about right now.

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