24 ms·

For as many articles that there are about how great, smart, [fill in another positive adjective] Google is, I'm surprised that no news source has pointed out th

by mcyger 16y ago

For as many articles that there are about how great, smart, [fill in another positive adjective] Google is, I'm surprised that no news source has pointed out the ridiculous behavior of Google. Who else would you work with (i.e., display advertising for) without having the ability to speak to someone by telephone when a difficult situation has occurred? None of our customers would tolerate this -- why do we continue to allow Google to get away with it? I'm not saying this author is right or deserving of the revenue (I don't have all the details or facts), but what is clear is that he has: 1. Earned Google a good bit of revenue 2. Appears earnest 3. Deserves to interact with a real human in a real way (not by automated emails without the ability to reply) Why aren't more people appalled by Google's actions and the way they treat their partners?!

kachnuv_ocasek 16y ago
vimeo
- rbanffy 16y ago
  That solves the YouTube part of the problem, but not the AdSense part. Google has for all purposes a monopoly on mass-market web advertising
  - jonprins 16y ago
    In that case, blip.tv (per view, content producers can make more money through us than through YouTube). Full disclosure: I am employed by blip.tv.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      It's for video content. Bloggers and other site owners have nothing to replace AdSense. They have, but it's always much more work, often more than a hobby would warrant
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
snorkel 16y ago
Good point. With thousands of dollars at stake one ought to be able to speak to a human and have a reconciliation process.
- ifthen 16y ago
  Except, Google would then be in the customer service business. I’m not saying they couldn’t throw resources against that endeavor, but think of the time waste of being on the phone vs. having automated responses based on the keywords in someone’s complaint. Cuts down on time/cost from their POV. Not justifying what Google did, just sayin. It's maddening though in a time when people -- one would hope -- would have access to better customer service, yet, it feels things are as bad as ever. It’s hard enough to reach someone on an e-commerce site, forget social networks (1-800-FACEBOOK ain’t happening anytime soon). Little different scenario in this case, but you get the gist. The only time they seem to make it easy to reach out to a real person is when you need/want to buy something.
kjksf 16y ago
For reasons of economics. As an analogy, if you're a one-person developer, your problem is usually that you don't have enough users. You can participate in forum discussions with users of your software, fix bugs within days, send a personalized thank you e-mail for every purchase, all to provide exceptional level of service to grow word of mouth and get more customers. When you get to the size of Microsoft, that won't work anymore. Your expensive devs have to separated from users by layer of product management, your support calls cost you serious money and one troublesome buyer can cost you much more than he paid for in software etc. Google finds itself in the same boat with AdSense. I don't know the exact scale of AdSense but it must be in millions of publishers and thousands of advertisers. Even a small number of people insisting you give them special consideration or explain in detail what exactly did they do wrong will burn incredible amount of support time and money. It's clear why he was banned from AdSense and yet he wrote an epic post detailing his experience and inventing multiple reasons for why it wasn't so bad. Do you think that if someone at Google sent him a personal note explaining why he was banned, he would just say "oh, I get it now, you were so totally justified in terminating my account". No, he would keep badgering Google until they finally gave up responding and he would end up writing the same epic post, this time quoting extensively his correspondence with heartless Google employee who was not swayed by his obviously correct arguments. Someone arguing with Google to not suspend their account has all the incentive to keep badgering Google until Google says "this is a final decision". Google can't win this battle and they do the best anyone can do at that scale.
- dasil003 16y ago
  > Google can't win this battle and they do the best anyone can do at that scale. I agree right up to this point. The economics of online advertising are extremely harsh when you add up the attention span of online users, the ease of fraud, and the feedback available to advertisers. It's a sea change that people need to come to terms with one way or another. However the level to which Google dehumanizes publishers is quite likely to bite them in the ass. Enough of these articles and their publisher base will eventually shrink and open the door the competition. Now obviously the competition will not be able to change the economics, but PR is not Google's forté, and it's possible to do a much better job handling these incidents without any change in the economics.
mpclark 16y ago
PayPal behaves like this too.

by mcyger 16y ago

kachnuv_ocasek 16y ago

vimeo

rbanffy 16y ago
That solves the YouTube part of the problem, but not the AdSense part. Google has for all purposes a monopoly on mass-market web advertising
- jonprins 16y ago
  In that case, blip.tv (per view, content producers can make more money through us than through YouTube). Full disclosure: I am employed by blip.tv.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    It's for video content. Bloggers and other site owners have nothing to replace AdSense. They have, but it's always much more work, often more than a hobby would warrant

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

snorkel 16y ago

Good point. With thousands of dollars at stake one ought to be able to speak to a human and have a reconciliation process.

ifthen 16y ago
Except, Google would then be in the customer service business. I’m not saying they couldn’t throw resources against that endeavor, but think of the time waste of being on the phone vs. having automated responses based on the keywords in someone’s complaint. Cuts down on time/cost from their POV. Not justifying what Google did, just sayin. It's maddening though in a time when people -- one would hope -- would have access to better customer service, yet, it feels things are as bad as ever. It’s hard enough to reach someone on an e-commerce site, forget social networks (1-800-FACEBOOK ain’t happening anytime soon). Little different scenario in this case, but you get the gist. The only time they seem to make it easy to reach out to a real person is when you need/want to buy something.

kjksf 16y ago

For reasons of economics. As an analogy, if you're a one-person developer, your problem is usually that you don't have enough users. You can participate in forum discussions with users of your software, fix bugs within days, send a personalized thank you e-mail for every purchase, all to provide exceptional level of service to grow word of mouth and get more customers. When you get to the size of Microsoft, that won't work anymore. Your expensive devs have to separated from users by layer of product management, your support calls cost you serious money and one troublesome buyer can cost you much more than he paid for in software etc. Google finds itself in the same boat with AdSense. I don't know the exact scale of AdSense but it must be in millions of publishers and thousands of advertisers. Even a small number of people insisting you give them special consideration or explain in detail what exactly did they do wrong will burn incredible amount of support time and money. It's clear why he was banned from AdSense and yet he wrote an epic post detailing his experience and inventing multiple reasons for why it wasn't so bad. Do you think that if someone at Google sent him a personal note explaining why he was banned, he would just say "oh, I get it now, you were so totally justified in terminating my account". No, he would keep badgering Google until they finally gave up responding and he would end up writing the same epic post, this time quoting extensively his correspondence with heartless Google employee who was not swayed by his obviously correct arguments. Someone arguing with Google to not suspend their account has all the incentive to keep badgering Google until Google says "this is a final decision". Google can't win this battle and they do the best anyone can do at that scale.

dasil003 16y ago
> Google can't win this battle and they do the best anyone can do at that scale. I agree right up to this point. The economics of online advertising are extremely harsh when you add up the attention span of online users, the ease of fraud, and the feedback available to advertisers. It's a sea change that people need to come to terms with one way or another. However the level to which Google dehumanizes publishers is quite likely to bite them in the ass. Enough of these articles and their publisher base will eventually shrink and open the door the competition. Now obviously the competition will not be able to change the economics, but PR is not Google's forté, and it's possible to do a much better job handling these incidents without any change in the economics.

mpclark 16y ago

PayPal behaves like this too.