Bradley v. Google, Inc.

Bradley v. Google, Inc.

Opinion

ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART DEFENDANTS' MOTION TO DISMISS

INTRODUCTION

This is a lawsuit over five dollars. It alleges fraud, breach of contract, and various other claims. Defendants Google, Inc., and Google AdSense now move to dismiss plaintiff Theresa Bradley's complaint pursuant to FRCP 12(b)(6). Plaintiff's first through seventh claims fail to plead facts that if true would entitle plaintiff to relief. Plaintiff's eighth claim survives to the extent that she has pleaded a claim of injury to property. Plaintiff will be granted limited leave to amend. Accordingly, defendants' motion to dismiss is GRANTED IN PART as to plaintiff's first through seventh claims, and DENIED IN PART as to plaintiff's eighth claim.

STATEMENT

Bradley was a psychiatrist who also had a juris doctorate. Plaintiff owned a small business called Bravacorp that provided corporate [*2]  consulting services and listed a number of large companies and government agencies as its clients. Bradley and Bravacorp ran a website called www.bravacorp.com. The website provided information about Bradley's and Bravacorp's services, and advertised those services (First Amd. Compl. P 5-6).

Google provided advertising space on the internet to third parties through its service Google AdSense (id. at P 6). Participants in the program allowed Google AdSense to place ads from third parties on their websites after completing an application and inserting some hypertext markup code into their site. The ads were tailored to the host website's content. Participants were able to block ads from competitors, or other ads based on their content or origin (id. at Exh. A). Participants also had the option of choosing default ads to appear on their site if they did not approve of the ads that Google AdSense placed there, or if no ads relevant to the website's content were found. Significantly, Google AdSense paid participants each time an internet user clicked on the third-party ads posted to the participants' website. To eliminate the problem of participants attempting to profit from this [*3]  arrangement by clicking on the ads on their own websites, Google AdSense's contracts explicitly forbade participants from doing so (Req. Jud. Not. Exh. A P 5).

Bradley signed her website up for Google AdSense on August 10, 2006 (First Amd. Compl. P 7). Google AdSense did not provide her with any way to see which ads would be posted to her site before they appeared there (id. at P 9). Wanting to investigate the third-party ads placed on her website, Bradley clicked on them (id. at P 13-14). Also, she communicated with Google AdSense and asked them to remove some of the ads placed on her website (id. at P 15). The ads were not removed (id. at P 16). On August 19, 2006, Google AdSense terminated her account, removed all ads, and failed to pay plaintiff the approximately five dollars in revenue that the ads on her site had generated (id. at P 17). Plaintiff filed her complaint against Google and Google AdSense shortly thereafter.

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