IncrediMail Gets A Stay Of Execution From Google

A week ago Google disabled IncrediMail’s (MAIL) Adsense account and the stock price of the public company, which relies heavily on Google revenue, promptly tanked.

Today they were given a stay of execution: “Google and IncrediMail are now co-operating with the goal of resolving any remaining compliance issues, if any.”

What happened? Neither side is going to say. But it’s a safe bet that some significant level of click fraud was occurring on IncrediMail; it’s the only obvious reason Google would have to ban them.

Will IncrediMail’s stock price fully rebound? I’m betting it won’t - investors are all too aware, now, of IncrediMail’s reliance on a single revenue partner. Keep an eye on the stock and we’ll see if I’m wrong.

Comments

[wilrobinsun:]

Click-fraud is a possibility, but I don't think it is reasonable to refer to it as "a safe bet."

I discount the idea of click fraud for two reasons; 1) if it were systemic Google would have detected it and acted on it earlier, 2) forgiveness would not have been offered so quickly.

There are a number of different ways to run afoul of Google and I suspect that MAIL stepped over some invisible line, probably while implementing their recent search optimization initiative.

Disclosure: I traded the bounce, but I have no position now.

2008 Jan 21 07:36 PM

[stone:]

who gives a hoot about such a crappy little company?

2008 Jan 21 10:18 PM

[Roger Cuddy:]

How incredimail continues to get people to use the very sub par program is beyond me. Given the many claims of spyware against it I don't even understand someone installing it for a look.

2008 Jan 22 12:58 AM