This is a clear victory for our users.

California has a strong public policy protecting employees' rights to freely choose where they can work, and we are asking the court to vindicate this right.

This agreement covers all advertisers who claim to have been charged but not reimbursed for invalid clicks dating from 2002 when we launched our 'cost per click' advertising program through the date the settlement is approved by the judge.

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.

When the government was asked to justify their demand they conceded that they needed much less.

We are not trying to republish their book.

Under the agreement with the plaintiffs, we are going to open up that window for all advertisers, regardless of when the questionable clicks occurred.

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.

We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their motion vigorously.

We regularly review our policy and update as necessary. In this case, we were pleased to learn that the EU (European) Commission had embraced the concept of 'layered notices' for privacy policies, emphasizing simplicity and clarity. We agree with that and modified our policies in a way that we hope is both clear and easy to understand for our users.