March 28 (Reuters) - Google has agreed to pay $100

million in cash to settle a long-running lawsuit claiming it

overcharged advertisers by failing to provide promised discounts

and charged for clicks on ads outside the geographic areas the

advertisers targeted.

A preliminary settlement of the 14-year-old class action,

which began in March 2011, was filed late Thursday in the San

Jose, California, federal court, and requires a judge's

approval.

Advertisers who participated in Google's AdWords program,

now known as Google Ads, accused the search engine operator of

breaching its contract by manipulating its Smart Pricing formula

to artificially reduce discounts.

The advertisers also said Google, a unit of Mountain View,

California-based Alphabet, misled them by failing to

limit ad distribution to locations they designated, violating

California's unfair competition law.

Thursday's settlement covers advertisers who used AdWords

between January 1, 2004, and December 13, 2012.

Google denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.

"This case was about ad product features we changed over a

decade ago and we're pleased it's resolved," spokesman Jose

Castaneda said in an emailed statement.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs may seek fees of up to 33% of the

settlement fund, plus $4.2 million for expenses.

According to court papers, the case took a long time as the

parties produced extensive evidence, including more than 910,000

pages of documents and multiple terabytes of click data from

Google, and participated in six mediation sessions before four

different mediators.

The case is Cabrera et al v Google LLC, U.S. District Court,

Northern District of California, No. 11-01263.