Google has announced a proposed settlement to settle claims of click-fraud. The part of the settlement that concerns me is that the $90 million isn’t to be paid out in cash – it’s to be paid out in advertizing credits. I haven’t seen any online commentary about the impact to Adsense subscribers. Imagine if Google decides to provide the $90 million in advertizing using their Adsense program. What if they decide to pay out to the Adsense subscribers (the people who actually display those context-sensitive ads) much lower than the going rate for theat ad? They could even pay zero (like a Public Service Ad), and the Adsense subscriber couldn’t do anything about it. They probably wouldn’t even know!