Spyware researcher says Google should drop partnership with shady advertising partner
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman has published a report which, he says, details a commercial relationship between search giant Google and a pay-per-click advertising firm called InfoSpace. According to Edelman, InfoSpace uses conversion-inflation traffic - posting ads for websites in ad space on those same websites - from the WhenU spyware program to boost its profit margins.
Edelman says that Google's partnership with InfoSpace is "ill-advised" for several reasons, including the fact that InfoSpace has a bad track record with misplaced advertising, which should have given Google pause. Additionally, says Edelman, InfoSpace's habit of farming out ad distributions to smaller firms circumvents Google's usual quality control process and prevents the exclusion of inappropriate content.
Edelman's findings have been echoed by other researchers, like The Register's Cade Metz, who says that the Google-InfoSpace-WhenU deal offers a poor service to the companies being advertised.
Experts say that spyware has been in decline in recent months, as scareware tied to fake anti-virus software takes its place as one of the primary drivers of illicit commerce.
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