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328 Comments
- Maudrid, on 03/06/2009, -17/+483God knows I love Google, but this is just ridiculous.
What if they close my Gmail account for no reason?
I've just realised how dependent I am of many of Google's services.
Please help make this story famous, maybe it will make Google respond to this poor man. - thybag, on 03/06/2009, -12/+384After all that they still didn't tell you why you got banned? So much for "don't be evil" ...
- BigManOnCampus, on 03/06/2009, -14/+258Dugg for interesting story.
- serif69, on 03/06/2009, -30/+238I think my internet is broken. This is a front page story on digg from the Huffington Post that doesn't once mention the absolute evil of Republicans, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Fox News, neocons, true conservatism, capitalism, the military, making profits, or Bush; or the mind-blowing awesomeness of Obama, Pelosi, Clinton, socialism, liberalism, government spending, taxation, protesting, cap-and-trade, or Congress. And there are no comments on said article so far that mention Boosh, Repugs, hope, conservatards, The Troof, war crimes, climate change, or any other such nonsense. What is happening?
- moo113, on 03/06/2009, -6/+193Read the story before commenting. He sued because Google owed his company $721 that they refused to pay out. He won, appropriately, in small claims court.
Score one for the little man. - AlanFang, on 03/06/2009, -16/+197Good for him. Google Adsense started out great, but it has slowly been turning into an internet mafia. At this rate it will go down the same road ebay/paypal did and turn into a piece of crap. Maybe case will make Google rethink their policies.
- dtfinch, on 03/06/2009, -3/+143If that was the reason, Google should have said so. But they didn't.
If Google had a valid reason, there was an incentive for them to share it with the court. Since they wouldn't, the safe assumption is that they had no good reason whatsoever. - Bleue, on 03/06/2009, -20/+124So the author was a domain squater who's account was shut down correct? Or am I reading this wrong?
- judolphin, on 03/06/2009, -4/+104Good for him. And thank goodness for the existence of Small Claims Court... it's a great equalizer in David vs. Goliath battles.
- PeanutCheeseBar, on 03/06/2009, -31/+124Since when did HuffPo become Consumerist?
- ProaSailor, on 03/06/2009, -12/+97Evil!
- twiztidsinz, on 03/06/2009, -4/+83Since when did the Consumerist have a monopoly on consumer-based stories?
- dtfinch, on 03/06/2009, -1/+69I wish PayPal lost more cases like that. I think that's their business model, seizing accounts giving no explanation and pocketing the balance.
- zydeco, on 03/06/2009, -2/+60Okay, but Greenspan mentions in the article that Google *does* sell ads on these squatted domains, just not to little guys like him.
I think we're eventually gonna find out that AdSense is a house of cards bigger than Madoff. Everyone faking clicks and selling ads to each other. - krenzo, on 03/06/2009, -0/+55I think the point is that he probably violated some policy, but no one from Google, not even the paralegal, could give the actual reason. They just kept saying they didn't have to give a reason because their terms of service says any reason is valid when it's actually not.
- joe7845, on 03/06/2009, -1/+54 "What if everyone whose account was cancelled sued Google?"
That's called a class-action lawsuit. Not a bad idea actually. - apackofmonkeys, on 03/06/2009, -2/+47What would you do if someone robbed you of over 700 bucks? Shake a stick at them and yell?
- fyngyrz, on 03/06/2009, -0/+44> I don't think they would do it without reason
That's fine. The question is: What was the reason?
Absent a reason, they (1) withheld money they owed this guy, who had, after all, provided the clicks that they sell their advertisers; (2) Wouldn't tell him why; (3) Wouldn't give him access to his earnings records; (4) Wouldn't answer his questions in any venue.
At this point, any good reason they might have is buried under such bad behavior that I can't fault the judge's decision at all.
It's very nice that Google provides these useful services for us. But that, in turn, means that we will depend upon them to some degree. And I think it is worth keeping in mind that Google isn't doing this for altruistic reasons; in fact, they're doing it because it is making them rich.
Now, given a customer's interaction and some degree of dependence upon Google, that Google has asked them to enter into, does Google have any obligation to behave in a responsible, accountable manner? I submit that they do.
And I don't think that terms of service that say "we're god, you're *****" can stand in for responsible behavior.
Just my opinion. [shrug] - kahn2001, on 03/06/2009, -6/+45You don't need too know how digg's algorithm works to game the system, just ask Mr.BabyMan :-D
- NegativeDigg, on 03/06/2009, -0/+38How come just not tell them in court? I mean, if google had a legit reason they could just admit it in court and win the case instead of saying they can close your account for no reason. Generic answers don't win in small claims court because that's what happened with me and a insurance company.
- Nicolyrezk, on 03/06/2009, -8/+45It was shut down for being one of those squatted domains full of ads, yeah.
- bcarl314, on 03/06/2009, -7/+39Google is the new Microsoft people. No longer driven by innovation, they are, like every other publicly traded company, beholden only to the dollar.
I've been saying that since they went public years ago. But all the tech "fanboys" thought, "No way, not my lovely google, they're too nice. They'll remember the people that made them big". Sorry, didn't happen. Never has, never will.
Google will probably be around for a while, but they're loosing on the innovation front already. They are now where MS was 10 years ago. All they do is buy up other companies and services to "innovate". Eventually, someone will have an idea too big for them to buy and they will be replaced. May not next year, maybe not in the next decade, but it will happen. - LiquidIse, on 03/06/2009, -3/+35They are few and far between of this barren wasteland knows as the frontpage lately.
- Harabeck, on 03/06/2009, -4/+35Dugg to encourage Huffington Post to write more good articles for a change.
- voyetra8, on 03/06/2009, -1/+32For those who don't know, Aaron Greenspan was the creator of the original "Face Book": http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/technology/01fac ...
- HigherLogic, on 03/06/2009, -1/+31"[T]erminating accounts for 'posing significant risk' just when they started to earn significant amounts of money seemed like a great way for Google to cut accounting liabilities."
I had an AdSense account back in 2006 on a legitimate site with real content, forum, etc. My account was active until I started pulling $580-600/month from the program. That lasted 2 months, and then my account was terminated with no reason given. I tried all the things the guy in the article did in regards to contacting Google, but that's as far as I went with it.
This seems to be the pattern with Google. As soon as your site starts pulling in money, they just cancel you, for absolutely no reason, and it's impossible to get in touch with anyone but an automated bot.
My account still exists too, of course, I can't access it, or sign up again to activate it because it says I already have an account. I still receive newsletters and announcements from AdSense. It's a joke basically... - zaffir, on 03/06/2009, -13/+42From the article:
"Two days after the account was disabled, on December 11, 2008, Google's AdSense team posted a message on its blog introducing a new system called "AdSense for Domains." Unlike normal AdSense ("for Content," as it was then re-branded), AdSense for Domains was designed to be used by web sites that were effectively blank. When I had tried to sign up for it previously, given that my domain name needed exactly such a service, it had been "closed"--code for "available to a limited number of companies with large numbers of domain names." Now, I was once again enraged since Google could have easily allowed me to switch over to their new service if they had merely waited two days."
Sounds like he was in violation. - HippyInASuit, on 03/06/2009, -1/+29Yeah man! Having legal recourse when you've had money withheld that is owed to you is so ***** retarded!
- anubis2night, on 03/06/2009, -18/+44I was thinking of using adsense, now I'll think twice, thanks for the article, dugg...
- tonberryqueen, on 03/06/2009, -3/+28Google owed him money. Hence, he went to effort to collect said money. Makes sense to me.
- sexybobo, on 03/06/2009, -5/+29You do realize it clearly states in the article he was a domain squatter which is against googles TOS and really ***** annoying.
- ToastPop, on 04/17/2009, -5/+28Very interesting article, and really opens your eyes to how risky depending on Google can be. I wonder if they have a similar policy for their e-mail, imagine how much everyone here would be screwed if their Gmail account was closed.
- alphaeno, on 03/06/2009, -2/+25Matthew, sorry to say but that is not true. If I have a contract that says, "sign here and you will obtain 1 slave", then it is not valid because it is violating the 13th amendment and is a criminal offense.
It is against the law to refuse service to someone based on the color of their skin/eyes. Im sure one can sue for violating their Civil Rights. - Gudeldar, on 03/06/2009, -1/+23Don't mind the fact that it has nothing to do with politics, left vs right, democrat vs republican.
- incongruity, on 03/06/2009, -0/+22And this is exactly why I just can't bring myself to *depend* on my gmail account -- or any other free service from google, beyond perhaps their search engine.
What made that point really well for me was a recent experience with google-owned blogger.com. After signing up for a blogger account, my new blog was characterized as "spam" before I'd posted *anything* to it. Now, whatever, Google has their reasons -- but what scared me was just how slow and unresponsive the process was to get it unlocked and declared spam free. It was far from user friendly -- and it took easily two or three weeks, if not longer.
If I have to depend on gmail, I think it'll be the paid version of google apps for domains -- at least then they have some financial and contractual obligation to me..maybe. - voyetra8, on 03/06/2009, -0/+21He's actually the guy that started the original Harvard "Face Book" and I believe has been in litigation with the facebook.com 'founders' for some time:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/technology/01fac ...
Buried for not knowing that the ***** you are talking about. - tallguy240, on 03/06/2009, -18/+39Google has essentially become another Microcrap. They are too big. The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.
- ScubaSt3ve, on 03/06/2009, -1/+22They do have the right to shut down advertisers - fair enough. What's messed up is how they intentionally lead people affected by this on a goose chase until they give up. I worked with a person who had his account suspended. However, in this case there wasn't even a warning that the account had been suspended, it just stopped registering clicks/impressions. Several calls to customer service yielded the same response each time: "We'll look in to it and someone will call you back before the end of the day" - and then nothing. At least three times I was told the same thing almost word for word, making me think that this is a standard BS response they give without any intention of getting back. Finally - and this is after weeks of unanswered emails and being told to wait for calls that never came, we received a reply from an online chat support rep that the account had been suspended and told "not to contact Google again regarding this matter". I've found several others on forums that have had identical experiences. Sure they can shut ppl down if the want, and they don't have to give the exact details regarding why they did so. But having support intentionally flake on you (I've heard others that kept getting the "someone will get back to you before the end of the day" response) is just shady.
- vectorjohn, on 03/06/2009, -1/+21Yes, I was thinking that a few paragraphs down the page. "This is one of those ***** websites that comes up when I misspell a domain name! *****!"
I just wish Google did respond to him, and say exactly that. - DeathfireD, on 03/06/2009, -0/+20@blackinthmiddle - this type of thing happens a lot with rival sites that are within the same niche. Rivals know google wont tell the person ***** so they go mass click the ads.
There's also the company's that don't want to pay out the money they owe to sites that generated the client base for them. These company's figure they can avoid paying by going to the sites that their ads show up on and mass clicking the ads till google bans that persons account. Not only did that advertiser get their money back but they also gained FREE traffic and probably sales from that persons site. This in particular is becoming popular. - Insightful, on 03/06/2009, -2/+21Can you point out the part of TOS which he violated?
- sirjimithy, on 03/06/2009, -17/+36Very good article. But if their TOS states "for any reason" than yes, they can cancel your account because they don't like the color of your eyes ;)
- notman, on 03/06/2009, -0/+19Yeah, glad she brought it to our attention. What a great attorney!
- MrAwesomeMan, on 03/06/2009, -1/+19If a company refuses to pay money owed to an individual, I don't understand why it is "retarded" for said individual to sue in order to receive what is rightfully his.
I've heard of many "retarded" reasons for a lawsuit, but this is not one of them. - inactive, on 03/06/2009, -0/+18My adsense account was banned multiple times and I truly didn't do anything wrong. Most of the time it is because people who hated my site's content, intentionally click my adsense ads repeatedly to get my account banned.
Each time I had to file the appeal form and wait over a month to get a reply and every single time my account was re-instated. - Insightful, on 03/06/2009, -0/+18No they cannot. Just because it is in a contract does not mean it is enforceable.
You know the stub you get when you park in a paid garage that says management is not liable? If their employee stole your car and drive you out of the said parking lot, are they liable?
This is not even 1st year law school stuff. - FunnyBoyz, on 03/06/2009, -2/+20Good story.
Everyone should take action if they are being banned for no reason. - tama00, on 03/06/2009, -2/+20I have heard of sooo many stories like this. Yet people still pick Google. Their payout is as minimal as it gets anyways.
Let me seriously put this in perspective, in my life as a web developer, i have heard of at lest 40+ stories IRL and countless and countless of stories of this happening to people online where google cancelling their adsense program and refuse to payout. It like they plan to do this ***** to make more money!
I absolutely ***** refuse to use googles adsense program and i strongly with all my heart encourage anyone who reads this post to STAY THE ***** AWAY! It is no longer a matter if they will cancel your account its a matter of WHEN they will cancel it!
Please take this as your 1st 2nd and 3rd warning GOOGLE ADSENSE IS *****. - sirbeta, on 03/06/2009, -0/+18It very well could have been, but they did not cite that as the source, and the person they sent to represent google didn't know any better either. Perhaps if they better prepared and everyone knew exactly why it was canceled, the outcome might have been different.
- tault, on 03/06/2009, -0/+17Papyal refunds all money after 120 days of an account being closed. I hate paypal but they know that if they pocketed the balance and someone did a large suit against them it would force them to go belly up.
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