John Beck Amazing Profits, LLC v. Google Inc. et al

Filing 61

MOTION to Exclude the Expert Report and Opinion of Thomas J. Maronick and Brief in Support by AOL LLC, Google Inc.. (Attachments: # 1 Declaration of Carl Butzer, # 2 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 1, # 3 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 2, # 4 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 3, # 5 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 4, # 6 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 5, # 7 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 6, # 8 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 7, # 9 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 8, # 10 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 9, # 11 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 10, # 12 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 11, # 13 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 12, # 14 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 13, # 15 Exhibit A to Declaration of Carl Butzer part 14, # 16 Exhibit B to Declaration of Carl Butzer, # 17 Declaration of Itamar Simonson, # 18 Exhibit 1 to Declaration of Itamar Simonson, # 19 Text of Proposed Order)(Babcock, Charles)

John Beck Amazing Profits, LLC v. Google Inc. et al

Doc. 61 Att. 9

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A. Q.

Yes. In order to ascertain whether or

not there was, in fact, that relationship between the search term and the sponsored link, how would we go about answering the question of whether, in fact, there was that relationship, other than ad by ad? A. Q. A. Again, I don't know. I have --

You haven't undertaken to do that? I have not undertaken that. I

have thought about how to go about doing that. Q. It is not within the scope of your

engagement in this case; is it? A. Q. That is correct, it is not. Do your results suggest that ever

since sponsored links were introduced years ago that search engine users remain regularly confused by sponsored links? A. I didn't look at it over time. I

just looked at it at a point in time, as of the point in time of my survey that the consumers are confused, that they have expectation of being able to buy the product or service from the sponsored link and/or they believe there is an association, affiliation, relationship.

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A control is, in survey research, is a condition where there isn't the claim or there's -- it measures for noise in the market or in the survey research. Q. A. such. Q. Tell the court and jury what noise What's its purpose? To measure for noise, if there is

is in your profession? A. As it relates to this it's the

extent to which the -- the responses are a function of something other than the claim in the ad. And this is in advertising cases.

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That's where you find controls. Q. So a control would measure whether

or not the initial interest confusion was caused by the stimulus or perhaps caused by something else? MR. FENSTER:
THE WITNESS:

Object to form.

Well --

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BY MR. MORAN:
Q. A. A control could do that? A control could do that if a

control was needed. Q. Did you do a control in this case?

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A.

Yes. Actually, I think by using

the generic tests where there was no explicit website we got a measure of the extent to which people would believe that there's an expectation being able to buy the product or service, independent of any particular product or service. Q. With respect to the survey

involving Southwest Airlines did you use a control? A. Q. No, I did not. With respect to the survey

involving Trek did you use a control? A. Q. No, I did not. Now, with respect to the so-called

hypothetical questions and/or survey involving iPAD did you use a control? A. Well, the use of the apple.com

sponsored link served to a certain extent as a control because consumers know that the iPAD is made by Apple, so it served a function of a control. Q. Let me ask you this. As to the very first question, which is roughly, I think you directed
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to me deals with that issue of overall expectations. BY MR. MORAN: Q. Yeah, but you're really just --

isn't that answer just telling me that that's your conclusion that there was consistency across the board? I guess my question is in doing the questions and asking the participants the various questions, you need to ascertain whether or not a given answer to a question is due to the stimuli that's shown or the question asked or is it caused by something else, such as noise? A. Well, that's -MR. FENSTER: Object to form. THE WITNESS: That's why the first, the generic where there is no stimuli, where are you able when you see a sponsored link, again, they were shown no stimuli, when you see a sponsored link are you familiar with sponsored links? Yes. Do you think you're able to buy the product or service from the sponsored' link, the searched for product or service from the sponsored link. So that serves as an
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overall control for the whole study, because that one there's no stimuli for comparison. BY MR. MORAN: Q. So it's your testimony that the

questions and the results for the Yahoo, Google and Ask surveys operate as a control for the remaining portions of the survey? A. Q. A. Q. That's correct. Do you really believe that? Yes. Let me ask you a couple of

different questions. During any of the work that you did in this case did you click on any of the natural or organic links at any time? A. Q. A. Yes, I did. Which ones? I don't recall. One of the

Southwest Airlines ones. Q. A. Was that important to your work? Not really. The focus really was

on the sponsored links and the ability to buy the product or service or, in this case, get an airline ticket from the sponsored link. Q. Did you click on the organic
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