I’m glad I went into a holding pattern on GOOGle stock last month because things have not been so good in that department lately. Google is making this pending settlement sound like good news.

Others are saying the opposite:

Six days ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt dismissed the click-fraud issue as “not material.” Now, six days later, Google has agreed to a settlement in ONE click-fraud lawsuit that could reach $90 million. I’m sorry, even if the lawsuit was baseless, even when you have $6 billion in revenue, $90 million qualifies as material.

Henry Blodget goes on to complain over Nicole Wong blogging about the case on the official Google blog, but I’m glad to see her commenting on the case:

We have a large team of expert engineers and analysts devoted to it. By far, most invalid clicks are caught by our automatic filters and discarded *before* they reach an advertiser’s bill. And for the clicks that are not caught in advance, advertisers can notify Google and ask for reimbursement. We investigate those clicks, and if we determine they were invalid, we reimburse advertisers for them. We will continue to do that, and believe that this settlement is further proof of our willingness to work together with advertisers to reimburse invalid clicks.

This settlement would only bring them current in the United States over the last 4 years and I’m wondering if this will the last of it for them. Why? Because they are still running out the big white blobs of Accidense space. Incidental and accidental might not be fraud, but it’s something questionable at least, especially if they do, in fact, settle this lawsuit. Why haven’t they fixed simple issues like these?

GOOG stock hasn’t bounced back from it’s near $500 peak a few months back, some believe in response to quarterly results that didn’t meet expert analyst expectations and others believe because it’s overvalued.

My personal opinion on Google is that they are becoming too scattered and less focused. They need to get back to search-related focus and features. Instead, they seem too consumed with this idea of organizing all the world’s information. Why that might seem like a noble cause to some, it continues to raise privacy concerns. I used to think most of these concerns were invalid, but I’m starting to slip to the other side. It’s becoming a valid reason not to run or use their services now and that’s playing against them in adoption of new tools and focus.

Meanwhile, I’m liking some of the directions MSN is experimenting on with their Live.com search (refuse to add the bizarre use of the word Windows to it, though). The new live search is working well for me so far, although reader derek says points out some navigational concerns. I’m sure they will work out the navigation (back button) issues. Perhaps by being able to bookmark sections of search maybe? Maybe that would be a good suggestion? Think I’ll make that one.

• Google Adwords API coming soon
• Microsoft sues Google
• How big a problem is click fraud, really?
• Google fights back: sues Microsoft
• Skype over two million online and almost 75 million downloads
• Lindows to become Linspire and gets $20 million from Microsoft