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I just don't see how this can be legal. How can they be allowed to completely destroy a business with no evidence and no appeal process? This surely must class

I just don't see how this can be legal. How can they be allowed to completely destroy a business with no evidence and no appeal process? This surely must class as abuse of a monopoly position. I guess the fact that they haven't been sued yet must be evidence that their terms are fairly tight but it feels like I've seen something that states that terms are only enforceable if they can be shown to be "reasonable" and it sure can't be "reasonable" to say "we think you have committed fraud but we will show you no evidence that you have done so and will give you no way to appeal your innocence". Right now it seems like they literally have the power to completely destroy any business hosted on their platform at a whim.

nmfisher 5y ago
I agree, I think it's totally insane that we are allowing this to happen (and I'm most the liberal/free-market person I know). Google is literally one of the most profitable companies in the world. It could easily implement a fair, open and transparent appeals process if it wanted. It's choosing not to. That is a massive "fuck you" to everybody who has invested huge amounts of time and money to build businesses that basically now operate at the whim and mercy of an unaccountable giant. Suing also isn't at good solution. If your business suddenly get cut off from 100% of its customers, do you think you're going to have enough cash sitting around to pay employees and lawyers for the next 3 years waiting for your case to be heard? There needs to be a mandated appeals process that is audited by an independent government agency.
- Majromax 5y ago
  > Google is literally one of the most profitable companies in the world. It could easily implement a fair, open and transparent appeals process if it wanted. I'm not so sure. Google's business model is to take a slice of billions of small-value transactions, usually in ad-serving space, while using every bit of automation to minimize its employee-effort per transaction. I suspect that implementing meaningful human review at the necessary scale would kill those operating margins. Fairly handling an appeal from an app with $10/month in ad revenue would take about the same amount of human time as one from an app with $10k/month in ad revenue. This doesn't excuse the business model, but I think it goes a long way towards explaining it. As you note, the tail risk here is regulatory -- if a sufficiently powerful government cracks down, it could impose an even more onerous review process than Google would choose for itself, or legislatively rewrite terms-of-use to impose a fairness or good faith standard. > Suing also isn't at good solution. Leaving aside the access to justice issue, suing isn't currently a good solution because it's not obvious what right the victim has in tort. Google's terms of service will allow its behaviour, so you'd be left with more speculative actions like unlawful restraint of trade that might require explicit evidence of bad-faith intent.

nmfisher 5y ago

I agree, I think it's totally insane that we are allowing this to happen (and I'm most the liberal/free-market person I know). Google is literally one of the most profitable companies in the world. It could easily implement a fair, open and transparent appeals process if it wanted. It's choosing not to. That is a massive "fuck you" to everybody who has invested huge amounts of time and money to build businesses that basically now operate at the whim and mercy of an unaccountable giant. Suing also isn't at good solution. If your business suddenly get cut off from 100% of its customers, do you think you're going to have enough cash sitting around to pay employees and lawyers for the next 3 years waiting for your case to be heard? There needs to be a mandated appeals process that is audited by an independent government agency.

Majromax 5y ago
> Google is literally one of the most profitable companies in the world. It could easily implement a fair, open and transparent appeals process if it wanted. I'm not so sure. Google's business model is to take a slice of billions of small-value transactions, usually in ad-serving space, while using every bit of automation to minimize its employee-effort per transaction. I suspect that implementing meaningful human review at the necessary scale would kill those operating margins. Fairly handling an appeal from an app with $10/month in ad revenue would take about the same amount of human time as one from an app with $10k/month in ad revenue. This doesn't excuse the business model, but I think it goes a long way towards explaining it. As you note, the tail risk here is regulatory -- if a sufficiently powerful government cracks down, it could impose an even more onerous review process than Google would choose for itself, or legislatively rewrite terms-of-use to impose a fairness or good faith standard. > Suing also isn't at good solution. Leaving aside the access to justice issue, suing isn't currently a good solution because it's not obvious what right the victim has in tort. Google's terms of service will allow its behaviour, so you'd be left with more speculative actions like unlawful restraint of trade that might require explicit evidence of bad-faith intent.