By Adam Ward
I’ve often wondered why nobody seems to do anything about online offers that are clearly scams. I picked apart one such scam in this post. But except for questioning the publishers’ decision to run such ads, I didn’t make a call to action. It looks like Google has taken action in a big way.
The Salt Lake Tribune today reported on Google suing Pacific Webworks of Salt Lake City for using Google’s name to sell fake products. I’m sure you’ve seen similar offers: “Download our toolkit for free to make tons of money from home using the Internet.”
I don’t know anything about Pacific Webworks, so I can’t comment on them specifically. But I can comment on these types of offers because they are, unfortunately, so prevalent online. The kicker for these types of offers is, often, 1) they don’t have a legitimate product, 2) unsuspecting consumers who download the product don’t realize it isn’t legitimate until after they’ve downloaded it, and 3) even though it was free to download, it comes with an ongoing monthly charge that hits the consumer’s credit card unless the consumer cancels it.
Google got involved in this one because it felt its name was being used to market products that it had no control over. Google has a right to protect its brand regardless. But when it comes to protecting its brand for products that are fraudulent, which carries a greater chance of tarnishing Google’s name, it makes sense that Google would aggressively target companies it feels are running such fraudulent offers.
I hope that this has a chilling effect on other bogus offers online, much the way CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 stemmed so much of the pernicious tide of email spam.
