Marketing Pilgrim

Danny Sullivan claims to have details of a $90 million settlement between Google and a click fraud class law suit.

That’s a big chunk of change and an amount that will surely encourage other companies to make a claim.

UPDATE: Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel for Google has revealed more details of the settlement.

Under the agreement with the plaintiffs, we are going to open up that window for all advertisers, regardless of when the questionable clicks occurred. For all eligible invalid clicks, we will offer credits which can be used to purchase new advertising with Google. We do not know how many will apply and receive credits, but under the agreement, the total amount of credits, plus attorneys fees, will not exceed $90 million.

It looks like Michael Arrington has real screenshots and info on the new Google calendar, named CL2.

From the About page…

CL2 makes it easy — even effortless — to keep track of all the events in your life and compare them to what your friends and family have going on in theirs. We’ve designed a calendar that works for you — helping you add events from email, friends, and other public calendars — so you don’t have to spend all your time maintaining your schedule. CL2 even helps you discover new events you might be interested in.

Head over to TechCrunch for lots of screenshots.

UPDATE: Valleywag alleges a Yahoo employee is responsible for leaking the details of the Google calendar project.

The Center for Media Reseach looks at a new study from Outsell.

Key findings include:

* Online is now used by 80% of advertisers, a massive adoption rate not broadly acknowledged. We expect more than 90% adoption by 2008.
* Google is rated more effective than Yahoo! & MSN in keyword ads; and than Yahoo! in contextual ads.
* Total online marketing spending will grow 19% in 2006, 8 times TV/Radio and 6 times print.
* Keyword ads are rated much more effective than contextual placement; we expect contextual / behavioral / search combo to rise.
* Blog and wireless marketing spending are still slivers at less than 2% of online budget and are poised to grow 43% and 19%, respectively.

Hat-tip Frank.

How do you revive a flagging business? Ship a new product with Google pre-installed. All of a sudden, you’re cool, trendy and back on track.

Google has launched Google News Israel, featuring articles from Hebrew-language newspapers.

It’s worth checking out just to read a site from right to left.

Chris Sherman has a great write-up of the newly launched Windows Live Search.

Coming soon to the Google store, their own Men in Black “flashy thing”. Yes, Google would like the entire industry to completely wipe from their minds the fact that they accidently posted internal projections for 2006.

The material, including a projection that Google’s revenue will rise by about 55 percent this year to $9.5 billion…besides forecasting its revenue, Google indicated its robust profit margins might weaken this year as more its rivals try to lure away some of its advertising partners

While Google claims in its SEC filing “these notes were not created for financial planning purposes, and should not be regarded as financial guidance,” you can’t help think that they have to have some sliver of reliability.