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As stupid as Google's customer service, and their interpretation of the word "deleted" is, it is pretty obviously not intentional. My reasoning is: it adds virtually nothing to Google's income.

If these had not been turned on, the next higher bidder would have gotten those clicks. Presumably this is "dutch auction" -ish pricing, so the high bids on these CPCs only got a high charge per click if there were other high bids out there?

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Wouldn't a Dutch auction work exactly the opposite way?

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction: "A Dutch auction is a type of auction where the auctioneer begins with a high asking price which is lowered until some participant is willing to accept the auctioneer's price, or a predetermined reserve price (the seller's minimum acceptable price) is reached. The winning participant pays the last announced price.")

Or do you use eBay's definition of the term: "eBay uses the term Dutch auction differently, for a multi-unit auction for several identical goods to be sold simultaneously to potentially multiple bidders."

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