Google is flashing the cash again, this time buying out London-based anti-malware start-up Spider.io in a bid to help protect its advertisers from fraud.
The seven-strong Spider.io team will assist Google in stamping out the malware that generates millions of false clicks on Google ads hence defrauding companies out of a fair sum of cash, while giving them a false impression of the success of each campaign.
It is not yet known how much Google has paid for the three year old company, but the company said Spider's fraud detection tech will immediately be utilised to enhance Google's current tools.
On its DoubleClick Adsense blog, the company wrote: "Our immediate priority is to include their fraud detection technology in our video and display ads products, where they will complement our existing efforts."
Weeding out bad actors
It added: "Over the long term, our goal is to improve the metrics that advertisers and publishers use to determine the value of digital media and give all parties a clearer, cleaner picture of what campaigns and media are truly delivering strong results.
"Also, by including spider.io's fraud fighting expertise in our products, we can scale our efforts to weed out bad actors and improve the entire digital ecosystem."
Spider.io's tech works by detecting malware that already exists on the users PC which targets online advertisers will millions of clicks.
Via Recode
