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$11M settlement reached with Google regarding terminated AdSense accounts
- techaddict009 8y agoWhat the title has to do with the page? I could not find this $11M anything on that page!
- jaclaz 8y ago>What the title has to do with the page? I could not find this $11M anything on that page! It is on page #9 of the settlement PDF: http://www.adsensepublishersettlement.com/docs/settlement.pdf http://www.adsensepublishersettlement.com/docs/settlement.pd... "1.44. “Settlement Fund” means a cash fund of $11,000,000, to be paid by Google in accordance with the terms of this Settlement Agreement. " and later on the same page: "2.1. Settlement Fund. Subject to the terms of this Agreement, Google shall establish a Settlement Fund of $11,000,000. Google’s total financial commitment under this Agreement shall be $11,000,000. " Later there is the order in which this amount will be paid, the actual people which suffered from the thing will be paid last (only after deduction of expenses, services, etc. which it is easy to presume will not be "peanuts"). We'll see how much people that were affected will actually get back.
- techaddict009 8y agoOP should have linked the PDF instead.
- Operyl 8y agoHe was not the poster of this article.
- techaddict009 8y agoOh sorry. Corrected the comment.
- RasputinsBro 8y agoI worked in advertising and I saw how scared AdSense publishers constantly were of getting banned by Google. I understand that Google has to defend their business, but some times they were really harsh on things that were debatable grey areas. I always thought that Google was just needlessly giving itself a bad reputation as a business partner. $11M is about 1 hr of Google's revenue (365 x 24 x 11/100000 = 0.96) EDIT: This actually reminded me of that post a few days ago on HN, about the guy comparing foxes and racoons with some companies in the financial industry, and how some could be winning at the game but losing at the meta-game. Google should be more careful with its meta-game.
- smartician 8y ago11 million is a joke really. I only lost about $250, but it pretty much killed off an otherwise promising potential startup.
- jacquesm 8y agoAlternative reading: they did you a favor by showing you early on that they could kill your startup at a moments notice. That's a lot better than to have 25 people on the payroll and see your advertising contract go up in smoke (which happened to me).
- smartician 8y agoI agree. It also taught me a valuable (and fairly cheap) lesson on not relying on a single source of revenue.
- paulpauper 8y agoyeah if someone slips on your property and gets hurt, you're looking at millions potentially But a $600+ billion dollar company that steals millions of dollars from thousands of publishers? $11 million . It's as if they measured it down to the penny exactly which is rare because often you see these huge settlement numbers like for tobacco companies, where it seems excessive. But the case where there are the most victims and the most hurt victims and victims that are the most innocent gets the most pathetic, most measured payout. It's the exact opposite of the frivolous lawsuit.
- Ensorceled 8y agoI get the "We think your business is a scam and so we are terminating our relationship" but I don't understand why "... and we'll keep the money." doesn't result in criminal charges.
- smartician 8y agoWhat's even worse is that they won't tell you what you allegedly did wrong. You can appeal, but you have to guess what you did wrong and provide evidence, but you can't even access your click data anymore since you're now locked out. It's like being in a relationship with a psychotic person.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- joering2 8y agoExactly and that's one of not-so-many reasons I'm so happy for GDPR to kick in! Basically a big fuck you to Google: "give me all the data you have on me or I will report you and you may be on the hook for 4% of your revenue".
- ariwilson 8y agogoogle.com/takeout
- RobAley 8y agoThe reason you've been down voted is that takeout gives you all YOUR data that they hold, not THEIR data about you (which GDRP now says is mostly now your data)
- joering2 8y agoWhats even crazier is that I used that tool and google took 4 hours to build my archives. Fair enough. Problem is... some files are not mine!!! clearly not my name not my email address not my correspondence. No idea how this is happening. I will reach out to this person but other than that no idea where to reach to google as their checkout page does not offer any "contact us". I am also concerned someone using this tool will get my own data!!!
- apandhi 8y agoI've had friends that have lost $100k+ due to Adsense terminations on legitimate sites. I've personally lost about $10k. We'll see how much I actually get paid out from this class action (I think I read that they cap it at $5k)
- smartician 8y agoYes: "... Payments to each of the Class Representatives, not to exceed $5,000 each, as compensation for their active participation in the case on behalf of the Settlement Class ..." EDIT: see below for correction
- jkaplowitz 8y agoAs your quote notes, Class Representatives mean people with "active participation in the case" - i.e. the members of the class who spend their time dealing with the class lawyers and showing up in court as named plaintiffs. This would be separate from anything that class members receive just by being class members.
- smartician 8y agoGood catch! From the agreement document: "“Class Representative(s)” means each and all of the named Plaintiffs in this Action: Free Range Content, Inc., Coconut Island Software, Inc., Taylor Chose, and Matthew Simpson" So that clause means that the plaintiffs will get up to $5,000 on top of what they will receive as claimants, and there is no such limit on claims (but the total payments will not exceed 11 million, including attorney and class representative compensation).
- Tpsoc 8y agoThis was years ago for me, but as bad as it is losing the amount earned, it was just the lack of response when trying to understand why you were terminated. I had no idea why I was banned. I didn't employ any shady tricks. The only thing I noticed in the few weeks prior to the account banned was a higher CTR. I actually emailed Adsense support at that time to let them know that it was out of the ordinary for my site. Additionally, I also had an account on the CPA affiliate side of things with the same account that was banned because it was tied with the Adsense email account.
- bridanp 8y agoSame for me here. The lack of response was ridiculous. I would have loved to been told what was wrong or why the ban so I could at least try to resolve the issue somehow. But the only thing I received in return was that the decision was final. I noticed a higher CTR prior to the ban, but nothing else out of the ordinary. I had Webmaster tools and Analytics on site, so after the ban I could still research backwards, and could not find anything that was out of the ordinary other than the CTR was just a bit higher. Eh, it seems this is still a bit of a sore subject for me. I lost a good bit of income from this decision, and it hurt at the time. Looking back, I'm glad I don't gain income from this any longer. It just seems like a scam. I started out using my websites as a place to teach and inform and the different subjects I have knowledge and interests in. But trying to blend keywords in so that Google and the other ads I ran could get high quality "eyeballs" on my content really became an inauthentic experience.
- whataretensors 8y agoThat'll show em. I wonder if Google even had to move money from anywhere, or if it was fine to pay with profits from part of the day.
- jacquesm 8y agoThis is a rounding error to Google, they could not care less.
- ReverseCold 8y agoI think (?) op was being sarcastic.
- RandomTisk 8y agoProbably just had to demonetize a few more Youtubers in the name of censorship.
- jezzadebate 8y agoThis one still stings, even though it was years ago. I built and ran a mobile sports news application, we amassed millions of users and were written up in several publications. One day our AdSense account was disabled, no warning, no nothing. We had never resorted to a single 'trick' or 'hack'. Nobody at Google could even tell us what exactly we were supposedly accused of. After months of escalation, the final word was "we cannot tell you what you have allegedly done, we will not re-instate your account, you may not appeal any further".
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tluyben2 8y agoSeems most people here had the same experience. I do not understand why their practices are not actually illegal. We sent them tons of traffic (aka money to them) and they just terminated without any explanation or recourse. 11M sounds very low; we had a small company and we already lost several $100k.
- rlshaw 8y agoDoes this also apply to admob?
- rlshaw 8y agoDoes the settlement also apply to admob? They terminated admob accounts as well.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- djsumdog 8y agoBack in the early 2000s I ran Google ads, back when they were only text and small boxes. You had to earn $100 to get a payout I think, and after forever I still had like $12. I forgot about it and eventually pulled the ads. In 2011 I sold the domain to some Irish company that gave me $10k USD for it. ... kinda regret it now. It looks like I have the same Google account (found the old e-mails for adsense on that domain) even though I have nothing listed under adsense right now. I no longer run ads on any of my sites and probably never will, but it would be nice to get that fucking $12 for letting Google run all those text ads for those years.
- babaganoosh89 8y agoEventually Google will mark your adsense account as abandoned and transfer the money to the state where you can claim it. I'm a few months away before I can claim the $50 I have from adsense.
- DanBlake 8y ago11 million distributed around is going to be close to nothing on a per-publisher basis. I wouldn't be surprised if the spread was more than 100 to 1 on owed vs collected. (so if you lost 100k from a terminated adsense account, I doubt you would even get 1k from this settlement)
- tedivm 8y agoWhen I was in college I had a website that I ran google ads on. I let a balance build up over time so I could use the money to buy school books. When I attempted to cash out Google (which up until that time had no problem profiting off of my site) decided that I was part of a clickfraud ring and refused to pay out the money. There was no way to appeal. Honestly, to this day, I am still far less likely to use Google services (I won't touch Google's Cloud, for instance) because of how bad that experience was. The stress of being a college student who needed that money was definitely a multiplier, but at the end of the day I don't think it's possible to expect Google to do the right thing when it comes to customer support- especially when they can directly profit by hurting them.
- staplers 8y agowhen it comes to customer support Do they have customer support? Last time I used my google account (a few years ago) to attempt to buy a Nexus, my transaction was flagged as fraud and I was locked out of my account.. I tried for a few days to find a way to contact anyone from Google.. never happened.. I eventually gave up and bought an iPhone and it was ironically the best thing that could have happened in that scenario.
- bitL 8y ago> Do they have customer support? Powered by Google Duplex(tm)
- paulpauper 8y agoif you are a big ad words spender, they have some support
- janesvilleseo 8y agoThey also have support for Google MyBusiness (local listing). This is their gateway to more AdWord spenders. Most noticeable because it’s the first pop up you get after you claim your listing.
- busterarm 8y ago
- textech 8y agoWhy just 2010 to 2018? Mine was terminated back in 2008 with about $500 in it.
- partiallypro 8y agoMine was terminated before that, and to this day I can't open an adsense account, even with a site that gets a million views per year.
- paulpauper 8y agofile an LLC and get an EIN
- ganeshkrishnan 8y agoThe LLC will be banned along with all it's employees. Google bans related accounts of banned accounts as it's considered ban evasion
- googthrow 8y agoFrankly, the amount of power Google holds over small businesses is terrifying. It's incredible that a small bug in one of Google's algorithms could destroy your main source of income, with no explanation or recourse.
- circa 8y agoUgh, yeah this brings back bad memories. Similar to and reminds me of all the PayPal issues in the past as well. What headaches.
- bitL 8y agoSeems like Amazon is learning from Google here... Or did they form a cartel on freezing accounts without any explanation or recourse?
- scrollaway 8y agoIs the notice pdf text near-unreadable for anyone else or is it just pdf.js being messy? http://www.adsensepublishersettlement.com/docs/notice.pdf http://www.adsensepublishersettlement.com/docs/notice.pdf
- Operyl 8y agoReads fine for me in Safari.
- z3t4 8y agoGoogle ads where for the little guys, those small blogs, and personal web pages, with only a few thousands visitors/months. And you earned just as much as the big guys per user. Now it's only for the big guys, good luck earning anything if you have less then 10,000 monthly visitors. And it's the same for advertisers, good luck getting any clicks on your ads (99% of clicks are bots) if your budget is less then $10,000. When more and more people start to use ad blockers, there will only be bots left. There's more money then ever in advertising. But you need to be big in order to see any of it. I guess Google have tried to fight the bots, but it's an impossible battle with too many false positives, and small guys losing their hard earned ad money. I guess Google is too big to notice, they are one of the big guys, and they always get their share. I hope they go back to non intrusive text ads, show some love for the small guys, and kill the bot. Maybe add "captcha" to ads after you click them !? They need to do something drastic or their whole ad based business might crumble from beneath.
- mml 8y agoI had an adsense account to profit from an IP address i randomly purchased from an ISP, which was formerly apparently a somewhat popular porn site. Racked up about $950 in a month, then they turned me off, something about violating terms etc etc. It was a glorified 404 page with a google search widget & adsense ads on it.
- nwellnhof 8y agoPutting Adsense ads on pages without content is an obvious violation of the ToS.
- paulpauper 8y agoMy first respsonce was, that's it? Even personal injury lawsuits get bigger verdicts than that, and this involves actual businesses and thousands of people. The lawyers and other fees will eat much of that. No wonder google does not have to worry and can act with impunity .
- paulpauper 8y agoA google search for " Free Range Content, " shows nothing. They probably went out of business due to being banned.
- paulpauper 8y agoSo many stories of people who had their account terminated.
- lostmsu 8y agoI wonder why they just wouldn't go to a small cases court.
- cf498 8y agoWhen ever I read stories about adsense providers behaving like this, or even "banks" like paypal just closing accounts without any legal security whatsoever, or Websites themself selling user data and serving malware, I always think of situation Warez sites and their users were in a decade ago. Sure, If you visited specific Warez sites, you could assume that the Ads served will likely infect your machine. And sure, the guys running the websites might not be able to cash out the ad revenue. But the realization, that a lot of legit businesses today are in the same situation as sites who were run from shady servers in "digital no mans land" by guys concerned that some kind of law enforcement might ask who owns the site is either funny or deeply disturbing.
- mattbeckman 8y agoSweet. Can we get one for all the Amazon Affiliate accounts as well?
- ikeboy 8y agoAmazon stole about 2k from me in an affiliate account, rejected appeals. Someone should file a class action against them too, not worth it for me to do it alone.
- justhw 8y ago> Payments to each of the Class Representatives, not to exceed $5,000 each, as compensation for their active participation in the case on behalf of the Settlement Class; $11M payout for possibly thousands of publishers is pennies.
- dragonwriter 8y agoClass actions provide an opt out for class members which allows them to retain their own right to sue for that reason. Of course, if you lost money and weren't willing to take the cost/risk of a direct action suit to try to recover it before, I don't know why you'd spit in the face of someone successfully for securing you a mechanism for some.(if small) recovery now for basically zero cost now.
- 8bitsrule 8y agoThis is quite a one-sided 'settlement'. I suppose $11M will be enough to pay the 'administrative costs'. What a joke, 'Hon. Beth Labson Freeman'. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
- phyller 8y agoYears ago I tried to start a small side business on Youtube. I filmed and edited a dozen or so videos with great effort, and hid them until we could launch. While we were polishing things one of the guys that was working with me clicked on an ad, I believe twice. It was for a car or something and it was worth about $12 total. I almost immediately saw it on our account, and figured out what happened. I tried to disown those clicks and that revenue, but there was no way to do it and there was nothing I could do. It was obviously not a genuine users click because no one was watching our videos yet, and I'm sure the guy's account was associated to our project. Sure enough, a few weeks later we were perma-banned from adsense. Destroyed all hope for my business. At no point did we get to communicate with a live person. Fortunately I had set up an LLC and used the Federal Tax ID from the company instead of my own SSN or I would have basically been blackballed from internet advertising forever. I disputed it, owning up to what happened and explaining how I couldn't undo it. The robo-response was that my dispute had been rejected, ban was permanent. I bet this destroyed so many people's hopes and hard work over the years. When you have a million followers, it will take serious fraud to cause a problem. When you are a nobody starting out, figuring things out for the first time, you make one mistake and you are done forever. I realized that if anyone didn't like a less popular uploader they could just make a new account, and click on their ads until they got banned. Pretty horrible. I haven't been involved with adsense since, but if they don't provide the ability to disown clicks they should add that. There is a lot of testing that goes on when you are building a product.
- downandout 8y ago$11 million seems astonishingly small given the number of people that have been screwed by Adsense. If myself and one other friend received full payment for our closed accounts, we would consume about 2% of this fund by ourselves.
- ummonk 8y agoHave you not considered suing them yourselves?
- downandout 8y agoWe have, but it would likely cost more than we are owed, and take years. We might also get attorneys fees, but that wouldn't be guaranteed, so it's kind of a "win the battle/lose the war" type of proposition.
- drawkbox 8y agoAlmost everyone involved in content creation and tech has a story about being kicked from Google Adsense. What sucked about Google Adsense doing this is everyone started using Google, then got big and they killed off smaller web ad networks. Then they ripped the rug from under content creators that chose them where they cut them off. It was a bad move, I sometimes think it was a big data move only to get people's personal information and get free tracking across the web of user activity. It was definitely evil and the brick wall they setup for clarification was unnecessary and very cold.
- _rrnv 8y agoI had a 12-months old AdSense account with 300 GBP to withdraw. After I tried to cash out, Google banned the account for click fraud. If they were able to detect it, why didnt didn’t they do it on-the-fly and show my actual balance? This happened 10 years ago. Since then I was pretty sure Google is running a massive scam on the long-tail small publishers. Glad to know at least in US they lost a case...
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