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Don’t Be Evil: How Google Screwed a Startup

710 points by mikeknoop 15y ago

robomartin 15y ago
I hate to suggest this. I repeat, I really hate to suggest this: It is time for those affected to unite behind a push to initiate Congressional action against Google (and possibly others) for these practice. They are highly destructive and unfair. These companies ARE huge monopolies. They just can't be allowed to behave this way. I am the first one to raise my voice against more government incursions into our daily lives. However, there are cases where very few options remain on the table. Unless Google, eBay, Paypal and others who are committing these kinds of acts on a daily basis change their tune in a hurry I think that a collision with government action is unavoidable. A united front with government backing is probably the only viable option.
- vaksel 15y ago
  alternatively, Google can be slapped with a class action lawsuit I know their emails always say "we've refunded your money to the advertiser"...but has anyone seen proof of this? Any of you that advertise with Adwords Content...ever see a refund for any clicks?
  - capo 15y ago
    I imagine if the advertisers weren't receiving refunds they would be the ones contemplating a class action.
  - sjs382 15y ago
    > Any of you that advertise with Adwords Content...ever see a refund for any clicks? Yes
  - dangrossman 15y ago
    > ever see a refund for any clicks? Yes, all the time. Here's what it looks like in the billing summary: http://i.imgur.com/JVSVO.png http://i.imgur.com/JVSVO.png The alt text for the question mark graphic: "Your account has been credited for invalid clicks that escaped automatic detection."
- capo 15y ago
  So when they are lenient with policing ads they get sued for click-fraud and when they are strict then the government should intervene?! surly there must be a third option.
- nitrogen 15y ago
  As I said in my response to you 23 days ago[0], we have to be very careful that whatever we ask Congress to do doesn't get warped into something that protects eBay, Google, and PayPal against smaller competitors, e.g. by imposing a mandatory per-customer cost that is untenable for startups. In the case of AdSense, if such a measure proves absolutely necessary, perhaps the remedy should be as simple as requiring those disabled accounts who prove they are a real life human to be able to communicate with a real life human at Google to discuss the evidence against their account. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3697448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3697448
  - robomartin 15y ago
    Absolutely agreed. In my opinion, Government is the least desirable option in all cases. It's a hatchet when you need a scalpel. Yet, here we are, 23 days later (interesting that you remembered) having the same discussion. This is happening with far greater frequency than publicly exposed. I've seen it first hand. You have to wonder what Google's trail of destruction might look like. In the end these are families and businesses that are being affected in very signifiant ways. If one were to want to play the populist card, you could also say that jobs might be lost (or not created) when Google takes actions that damage or destroy company revenue streams. Also agree that it is not a simple problem to solve. That said, if the problem is too big for Google to deal with it then maybe they should stick with search and bow out of the ad serving business. A company as large as Google can't be compelled to make changes by one or a few individuals voicing their concerns. This is the fundamental problem. If they were good netizens they'd jump at the opportunity to fix the problem, no matter how difficult it might be. Hire another 100 engineers and figure it out. The threat of a force greater than theirs might just be the only reason to compel a company as powerful as Google to make changes. That, perhaps, is my greater point. I really don't want to see government regulate any of it. But I am not opposed to using government to force change or capitulation when few other options appear to be viable.
- robomartin 15y ago
  Let me also be constructive and suggest ways in which Google could make this process fair. First of all, don't make the process an digital on/off decision. Create a system of staged penalties leading up to account suspension and then, if abused, closure. New accounts should have an "on-boarding" process in place. It would be OK to tell the site that, for the first 30 days ads will be presented and NO revenue will be paid to the site. This is a monitoring period where Google can just watch and see how the site behaves. During the following 90 days revenue is slowly notched up from 0% to 100%. Again, close monitoring and feedback during this period is critical. If and when a problem occurs, Google is to provide clearly understandable data on the relevant violations and suggestions on fixing them. One argument against this is that, if they made their violation detection data public, spammers will use the data to get even better. Well, so be it. Use this to develop even better detection technology. Last I heard Google is staffed with pretty smart folk. Solve the problem! After clearly flagging the relevant problems give the account owner a reasonable length of time to fix it. Say, three days from receipt of the notice. If the problem is not fixed in the alloted time then ad revenues start to be discounted based on some well-explained formula. Maybe 10% per day. This should provide enough incentive for a lazy site owner to take action. This could also come with staged penalization of the site-standing in search. This could be controversial. Maybe not. This could also have an element of a reduction of the CPM revenue on ads served into the site. Once the revenue reaches zero ad placement stops. Perhaps there's the option for Google to serve non-ads with text noting that this site is in violation of AdSense rules. I can thing of few things that'll wake someone up more than having all of your ad locations populated with such a notice. Despite all of the above, the account is never killed off except for the most egregious cases. Having all ad revenue shut down the site is given a full report --with clear reasons-- of the violations and the timeline to ad-serving shutdown. AND, how to fix it. The site could be suspended from AdSense for thirty days, during which they have to show that they fixed the problems. Once the problems are fixed a staged restart of ad-serving would begin. At first the site would start being served with a few ads and they'd only earn, say, 50% of normal revenue. Over a period of three months of "good behavior" the sites ads would increase and improve. And, of course, the percentage of revenue earned per ad would notch back up to 100%. Oh, yes, if the account holder owns multiple sites on one AdSense account the sites ought to be treated separately. If one site is having problems but there's another that is in perfect standing account actions should only affect the site that needs to fix problems and not the entire account. I'm sure the above has holes. It is probably a reasonable start for a framework that could fix the problem. I've had the experience of having legitimate and above-honest clients get banned from AdSense for, well, we'll never know. The problem with the way Google runs this is that there's no way to make an honest mistake. This is very easy to do when you are just getting started. It's not fair.
- chc 15y ago
  If Google is so bad at this, wouldn't a better approach be to start or support an alternative ad network that does what you want? You sound extremely confident that Google is doing a horrible job in this space, so a competitor should just be able to do better and eat their lunch. As far as I know, Google hasn't been accused of any anticompetitive behavior, so they're not stopping you. That would be much less radical than lobbying Congress for some vaguely defined "action". I suspect you will find that once you get to a scale similar to Google's, you'll find yourself making similar tradeoffs. You could probably be a little better, but I don't think it's possible to be both forgiving and resilient against fraudsters. EDIT: On rereading, this sounded a little bit passive-aggressive, so I've rephrased it a bit. Hopefully it comes across more as an observation and less like an attack now.
  - dangrossman 15y ago
    You could run the exact same fraud systems and policies, but also offer customer support. It's not the fraud systems that are preventing competitors, it's achieving the critical mass of advertisers to offer competitive ad fill and revenue rates. It doesn't matter if you're the friendliest company in the world if you can't provide enough ads to pay as much, or anywhere near, what Google will pay the same site.
misterjangles 15y ago
It's frightening that this would happen to a company that actually has a relationship with google in as much as having an account rep. Those of us nobodys who are just running generic ads with no personal contact would have no recourse at all. I will say though, in every one of these cases there is always a little something odd. You never read about this happening without some small thing that was wonky about the setup. In this case there's a mention of the personal site without any details of what that is. I'd be curious to know what that was. Even still, it sounds like a gross over-reaction.
- discountgenius 15y ago
  Even if the "personal site" is kinkybattledungeonsandfoodfights.com, any account holder has the right to know what they did wrong.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
    That policy is not compatible with keeping the seedier side of the internet in the dark about the algorithms used, which is why Google doesn't do that. (You can disagree with this, obviously, but Google does have its reasons.)
    - mladenkovacevic 15y ago
      Sorry, can you explain a little more about this? How would e-mailing the account holder and telling them what they did wrong reveal the structure of the algorithm?
      - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
        If you're trying to scam Google (e.g. via click fraud), being told exactly how you were detected is rather useful if you want to be more successful next time.
zupreme 15y ago
This is a textbook example of why it's never smart to hinge one's profitability upon the whims of another company. I've been down these paths with Adsense, EPN, and others and I learned the hard way that affiliate programs and ad revenue can be booming one day and gone the next. Now I only build PaaS and SaaS sites (not counting freelancing work on the side) and I'm a lot happier with a much more stable income from my web apps that is not dependent on the whims of anybody.
- civilian 15y ago
  SaaS is "software as a service" but what is PaaS? Can you give an example?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - farnsworth 15y ago
    Platform as a service - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service
  - borski 15y ago
    PaaS is "Platform-as-a-Service." Heroku is a good example.
  - Mystitat 15y ago
    "Platform as a Service" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service
  - knowtheory 15y ago
    Platform As A Service. Heroku & Amazon Web Services are both examples. In fact, they're nested examples!
    - ghaff 15y ago
      Actually, AWS is generally categorized as Infrastructure-as-a-Service--although it's added a number of higher-level services that are more PaaS-like. (EC2 and S3 are definitely IaaS level. Elastic Beanstalk is pretty much a PaaS. Other services are in-between.)
mistercow 15y ago
This is actually an incredibly common practice of Google's, although in most cases they only make off with a few hundred dollars of ad revenue. I personally had it happen to me with a blog. They accused me a of "click fraud", disabled my account, and disappeared with the money they owed me. I did some research and found the same story repeated dozens of times. This has been going on for years. Basically, Google's policies mean that if you don't like a website which uses AdSense for revenue, you can screw over the owner by sitting at their site and repeatedly clicking their ads. Google will see the "fraud", assume it was the site owner doing it, and shut down their account with little to no opportunity for appeal.
- JustinChaschowy 15y ago
  Also, something incredible is that there are measures to take to disable this ability for saboteurs. Scripting that will only display the adsense advertisement once per IP visiting your site... yet guess what, Google disallows this practice!
- ajross 15y ago
  The second paragraph seems like something one could test. Have you? Fraud detection is just hard. And my expectation is that for every legitimate friendly fire instance there are six or ten "marginal fraudsters" trying to spin their troubles with Google via blog posts like the one in the link. I clicked on this thinking it would be a clear case of Google doing something "evil", and had to read through very carefully before I figured out that it was just another account freeze. Meh. If it's seriously $40k, then sue them and figure out what really happened in discovery. That would be a blog post I'd want to read.
  - mistercow 15y ago
    >The second paragraph seems like something one could test. I do not think it would be ethical to test it directly. But you don't have to search far to find people who have had their accounts crashed by angry exes.
  - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
knodi 15y ago
The issue with google ads is that it only takes one bad vistor to get your ad sense account disabled. Go ahead find a site with google ads start clicking the google ad over and over again until your IP is flagged (ads won't be displayed based on your IP). With in 30 days the sites ad-sense account will be disabled.
- zupreme 15y ago
  My assumption is that in 99% of the cases the revenue Google misses out on by terminating the accounts of site owners who experience the type of victimization is less than what they would spend in man-hours on investigating the matter to differentiate legitimate victimization from actual click-fraud.
- ktizo 15y ago
  Surely it cannot be that basic? If it is, then it would be relatively simple to automate this behaviour from a range of IPs and disable the accounts of hundreds, if not thousands of ad-sense customers.
  - zupreme 15y ago
    Actually, what you have proposed is exactly the approach that some black-hat practitioners have used to hide click-fraud. Some guys will setup a script to go to 5 sites (for example) and click ads on all of them. Their site will be one of the 5. All of the site owners make money, as do they, and because it's distributed across multiple sites, Google does not flag the activity as blatant click-fraud. If you spend any time a BHW you will see these schemes over and over again, along with people claiming to make hundreds of dollars per day "on autopilot"....
    - ktizo 15y ago
      That is similar, but I was meaning it less in terms of hiding click-fraud and more in terms of click-fraud-fraud, which would have a far more devastating effect on googles customers and if it was widespread enough would be horrendously bad for google as well.
JoachimSchipper 15y ago
[Edited at ~15min, original comment below] This "personal site" was http://guitarhero-4.com http://guitarhero-4.com, which was a thin affiliate site using a brand name without permission (ref: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803696 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803696, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803746 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803746). I think we've found the problem... [EDIT: original comment was: Looking at http://web.archive.org/web/20110203092609/http://guitarhero-5.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20110203092609/http://guitarhero-... (via http://i.imgur.com/wWyNd.png http://i.imgur.com/wWyNd.png), it appears that this "personal site" was a seedy affiliate site using a brand name without permission. I think we've found the problem...]
- scott_s 15y ago
  I am completely unable to follow your post. Instead of editing comments to include corrections, upvote and respond to the corrections.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    The original comment used the word "seedy". It was edited to "thin affiliate" which is less hostile.
  - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
    My apologies. The original comment referenced guitarhero-5.com, but apparently this was a typo by the Google affiliate and should have been guitarhero-4.com (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803746 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803746). This would completely invalidate my comment, prompting me to delete it, except that guitarhero-4.com is also a thin affiliate site - so the original point stands. But my post is indeed confusing, my apologies.
- draggnar 15y ago
  She told him to take it down and he did. Where is the problem?
- yeldarb 15y ago
Foy 15y ago
That's the main problem with automating as much as possible, and having as few customer service reps as possible. It feels like talking to a brick wall when something non-standard happens. If this issue gets resolved in light of the publicity it's now getting, it just further shows that the Google system is deeply flawed for it's users.
pgrote 15y ago
What else could Hatchlings have done to prevent this? I know people are saying, "don't rely on someone else for your profitibility", but if you are going to work with Google what other steps can you take? He seems to have done all the right things: 1) Found an account manager. 2) Formed relationships with public google folks. 3) Opened discussions to further integration through continued sales.
- zupreme 15y ago
  Assuming that his accounting of the facts is accurate, he did do all of the right things. That's why the "Dont rely..." comments are relevant. The affiliate-program market (and that's all Adsense is - a unique form of affiliate program) is almost universally open to this type of abuse. Would you want to work for a company where you never got to meet or talk to your employer, you never knew for sure how much your paycheck would be, or exactly when it would be mailed/deposited? That's what we all do when we signup for Adsense.
IsolatedDress 15y ago
Posting under a throwaway account because I do not want Google to try and screw me over further. Hatchlings will probably get their money back because this achieved some measure of popularity on a major site and this makes Google look like crap. If you're one of the thousands and thousands of small businesses that Google has screwed over, this is about the only way you'll ever get your money back because GOOGLE DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT STEALING YOUR MONEY AND DESTROYING YOUR BUSINESS. Everybody that loves Google because they talk a nice game about a free and open society and release some open source projects and say nice things about doing no evil should realize that their customer service is practically non-existent on purpose so they can steal your money easier. The only way to get your money back is to make them look bad. I hope more people publicize Google's actions in many of these cases so people would realize what a chance you're taking when you do any kind of business with Google. And think...this is is a guy with an actual account manager at Google...how bad do you think they treat the average small business that just does a few hundred or thousand dollars of ads and depends on that money to pay people?
ambiate 15y ago
I lost my Adsense account two years ago, due to valid violations. This saddened me, and was the end of web development for me. The stats were my heroine. Fast forward to Spring break of this year, I developed a few Android apps and one took off. I signed up for AdMob in early March. I kept clean and got my fill of daily stats and was once again happy with my new home on the internet. Fast forward a week and a half, I get an alert saying Admob accounts will be merged with Adsense, uh oh. I was generating decent income at this point, because let's face it, the Android market is just wide open. I decided to make my second appeal to Adsense, 2 years later, asking for another chance and explaining my understanding of the previous violations. I noted my clean record on Admob and my apps as my reason for appealing. 6 hours later, my AdMob account is banned without any kind of notification. My wife looks over at me and wonders why I'm so sad at the laptop after 10 hours of class. It had become my daily habit to kiss my wife and check the AdMob stats. It's not actually about making money, it is something about watching the growth/lotto. So, I have now given up on Android apps and just disabled all but the most popular one. I removed ads and cleaned up my last push. I wish there was some type of leniency. My wife offered to make an account in her name and just take over my Android apps, but the initial thrill is gone. There is a looming realization of Google controlling the majority of online advertising and that one mistake will probably haunt me for many years/services to come.
- typpo 15y ago
  When I was 12, I built apps to automate MMOs. I was making about $350/mo. from AdSense - not bad money for a kid my age - when my account was shut down on the last day of the billing cycle (ie., the day before they were going to send me a check). After some initial disappointment I changed to a subscription model, which increased my profit by an order of magnitude and incentivized me to work a lot harder on creating a quality product. Because of this, I don't regard my AdSense shutdown as a bad thing. Knowing nothing about the sort of apps you make, I'd encourage you to try to explore more options to monetize them. Clearly a number of people were using your apps. A different approach to monetization may be just as thrilling and rewarding.
  - seanp2k2 15y ago
conradfr 15y ago
It happened to me for a blog where adsense was removed for years. I moved my adwords campain for other business sites since then and advocate it when I can.
mcbaby 15y ago
DuckDuckGo
- elliottcarlson 15y ago
  I am downvoting you because this adds nothing to the discussion. While DDG may be a worthy search engine and a good alternative to Google as a search destination, it does not offer an alternative or a solution to the problem that is AdSense related.
  - elliottcarlson 15y ago
    (for those downvoting him further - there's no reason to get him hell banned, pretty sure he got the point!)
mikecane 15y ago
Is it my imagination or have I seen many "Google Screwed Us" posts and never one "Google Made It All Right" posts? It seems to me to be the opposite of Amazon, where I've seen many glowing posts about CS and very few posts about things going incredibly bad. Edit: Amazon is also relevant due to their Android app store and soon in-app purchasing. I expect them to start an ad network for apps too.
- Tichy 15y ago
  It's just human nature to put more energy into it if you are being screwed over. I think product ratings have the same problem (unhappy customers more likely to comment than happy customers).
- gcp 15y ago
  Amazon has an easy to find customer service that replies to your questions quickly and makes things right. Google makes it very hard to find or contact anyone. Unless they're selling your their site optimization services. I'm sure Amazon spends way more money in keeping their customers happy. They seem to realize this is good for repeat business.
  - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    >Google makes it very hard to find or contact anyone. // They make it pretty hard to initiate what should be a completely hands-off (for them) error report too. For example on Google Shopping they virtually always lie about the purchase price for goods that you find, then the top listed suppliers also lie about the price too. There's no [simple, visible or accessible] way to report either situation. From Google's POV this should be an automated system. Once complaints breach n then check that the listed lowest price equals the "best" price of those listed by suppliers. If not then correct the lowest price returned for that query. If complaints for a retailers price for a good breach m then scrape the on-page price (preferably using an anonymous IP) and compare with the retailers reported price on G Shopping. If there is a difference correct the difference, admonish the retailer and decrease the retailers reputation score. When reputation score is below x remove the retailer and send them a "naughty-naughty" letter. Why the advertising standards/trading standards people aren't issuing massive fines to Google and their associates for false advertising in this way I'm not sure.
officialchicken 15y ago
Thank you for sharing, and preventing me from potentially falling into this trap. I was considering doing an ad based project until I read this.
- campnic 15y ago
  So, you should balance this. There are lots of people out there that do well serving ads. It really depends on your product and your alternative avenues to revenue. It is a cautionary tale, but you shouldn't close the door because of that.
Steko 15y ago
"I realize that this probably wasn’t done maliciously and that we were probably caught up in some algorithm gone awry" I realize the diplomatic and empathic intent here but to me the whole episode is really damning if this is how they handle customers. Depriving people of payment for services rendered goes several steps beyond plain old shitty customer service.
web_chops 15y ago
Wow, this makes Paypal look like angels. I suppose we are just starting see the effects of ad monopoly. Once a few more alternatives are taken away, there will be no where to hide.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
powertower 15y ago
My own experience: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3576084 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3576084
user24 15y ago
When Google inevitably smooth this over to avoid the bad PR, just spare a thought for the hundreds of smaller sites who don't have the option to generate that kind of press (Google screwed me out of $50 on my blog about kittens doesn't have the same ring to it)
kposehn 15y ago
Unfortunately, this is a reality of using AdSense. I have never encountered anyone at Google that is malicious and/or gleeful about this happening. The lack of response comes down to the fact that Google would rather make sure they get all bad actors and throw out some good than be more lenient and let some bad actors stay. There are tens of thousands of AdSense spammers that try to take advantage of the system. 30-40% of impressions on Google Content Network ads (which run on AdSense) are complete junk. These impressions are via sites that take advantage of how easy it is to get in to make a quick buck before Google catches them. The ecosystem perpetuates itself because Google's priority is to maximize overall reach in the market: the more people using AdSense, the more impressions they get and the more people cookie'd for behavioral data. There is little concern with banning people unjustifiably as they have a different priority. Hatchlings did the right thing by diversifying and if you rely on AdSense, then you should to. Make sure you work with several networks (many pay better anyway) and look for other sources of revenue. This is what separates the sad stories from successes.
- feralchimp 15y ago
  > The lack of response comes down to the fact that Google would rather make sure they get all bad actors and throw out some good than be more lenient and let some bad actors stay. If that's indeed their attitude, then they deserve to burn long and hot over this shit. And nothing excuses a shutdown in communication, period. The lesson (to me) is "don't rely on AdSense for any make/break percentage of your revenue."
  - darksaga 15y ago
    Agreed. I've had several bad experiences with Google's AdSense and it was a real pain in the ass to deal with them. They suspected one of my accounts of click fraud and it took almost 2 years of back and forth to finally get my money back. Even after all of that, they never reinstated my account. My general attitude is the same, "Don't rely on Google for anything in which some kind of monetary relationship is involved." It's just not worth it - ever.
- stfu 15y ago
  The problem is, that Google's behavior creates a culture of cheating. When things become so obviously unfair, people are increasingly forced to solve the problems in "other" ways. While their actions may make sense in the short run (i.e. its just a few annoying web"masters"), the long term effects of being perceived as an unfair institution that is okay to trick seems to be more severe.
EGreg 15y ago
Why would google sooner disable a site showing ads and remove all revenue streams, than simply stop showing ads to "repeated" violators (based on IP, or whatever else they use to detect clickfraud) on that site, and only refund money made by THAT SECTOR the clicks came from?
- Toddward 15y ago
  Presumably, Google assumes that the account owner is the person or entity committing the click fraud and will find ways to continue perpetrating the fraud if only an IP or range is blocked. It's probably much less of a headache to just nuke an account than play a game of cat and mouse with fraudsters.
adsenseclient 15y ago
Posting from a throwaway handle, so that there is no way that Google would track me down. Our company uses AdSense, and we have not been disabled so far. Our monthly revenues are much larger than Hatchling's. We have user-generated content. Despite our MOST extensive, multi-tier keyword-based content screening system, we are terrorized by Google weekly, from noreply address, that AdSense ads are disabled on this or that user's page, due to various violations found (often in the content in obscure languages, e.g. Hungarian , Finnish, Turkish), threatening to shut down the whole account. We are aware that the account can be shut down at any moment, and have been diversifying our ad revenue component for the last couple of years, using CasaleMedia, TribalFusion, Adbrite, taking conscious cuts in ad revenue compared to AdSense in exchange for security. Those companies actually care about your revenue. DO NOT RELY on ADSENSE as a sole revenue provider for your startup! Do not! AdSense is only a good idea either if your revenue is negligible, or if you are a highly public high profile client like MySpace, where they KNOW that they cannot get away without serious negative PR.
- gcp 15y ago
  Thanks for bringing up some Adsense alternatives.
- cft 15y ago
  On my opinion, this is why Google Payments never took off: they used the same smart-ass approach to shut down merchant accounts, knowing when a merchant was about to commit payment fraud before it was actually committed. In the case of sale of physical goods, an account termination could be much more harmful, so people stuck with PayPal, no matter how imperfect it was.
  - waqf 15y ago
    I don't understand. If you're smart enough to shut down an account before it does anything fraudulent, then you have no conceivable excuse not to pay the balance out when you close the account.
    - shingen 15y ago
GigabyteCoin 15y ago
I was banned from adsense about 6 years ago... using my main personal email account. I tried to log back in a few times over the years, and after about 4 or 5 years I was told that they no longer had any record of my account. I signed up again (using the same email and personal information) without a hitch. I have been receiving checks for many months now.
grecy 15y ago
You may want to read "Why I sued Google and won" [1]. The guy has a similar story to yours, sued Google for the revenue already earned, and won all of it (it was only ~$700). For $40k, I'd sure look into it. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-google-and-won_b_172403.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-goo...
- cft 15y ago
  If you read the follow-up, you will see that he actually lost an appeal by Google: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-bothered-to-ap_b_213176.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-bot...
  - ceejayoz 15y ago
    In particular: > Despite Google's objections to what they perceived to be technical violations of their AdSense terms of service, they also had an entirely separate (but confusingly similar-sounding) program called AdSense for Domains, which handled the exact problem I was trying to solve--that of using advertising to profit from "parked," or unused, domain names, much like putting a billboard on a vacant lot. Though AdSense for Domains was closed to the public for years, Google did finally open it up December 11, 2008, just two days after my account was cancelled. Had it allowed my company to join in the first place, I would have had no reason to create my own billboard using "normal" AdSense since Google would have already taken care of it for me, and no violation would have occurred. "If Google would've let me into their private club I wouldn't have had to trespass in it" probably didn't sit too well with the judge.
- mattdeboard 15y ago
  Except that case was appealed by Google, and the judgment was cancelled.
jayp 15y ago
Great timing on the article. Easter is here... good way to acquire new customers in the "festive" mood. As the cliché goes: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."
Tomis 15y ago
On an unrelated note: > Sorry, due to a security vulnerability this browser is not supported. You might like Google Chrome. I actually hate Google Chrome, it's Internet Explorer 6 with a service pack. You don't support Opera? Seriously? For a long time Opera has been the most secure browser on the market, I don't know it's status in the last year. What security hole?
- yeldarb 15y ago
  They don't honor no-cache headers in the same way that all other browsers do which allows for duplication of virtual goods in some cases. We've spoken with their dev team but it's apparently a "feature" not a bug. Our V2 that is coming out soon will definitely support Opera though.
adharmad 15y ago
There should be a sub-clause to "Don't Be Evil": "Don't Be Indifferent".
- curiouscats 15y ago
  There is. Being indifferent, in certain situations, is being evil. And Google isn't being indifferent here, there is well documented extreme hardship created by Google's choice to operate in the way they do. They know this and choose to continue their behavior. It appears as long as Google believes it is more profitable to act in this way they will continue to do so. I would imagine (based on their actions and words) if this behavior was to negatively impact their estimates of their profits then they would change.
pg 15y ago
When things are this broken, it's an opportunity. Maybe it's time for someone to start an AdSense competitor whose focus is customer service. It seems to be deeply embedded in Google's DNA not so much to abuse AdSense users as to treat them like components in a machine. They treat AdSense users much as they do servers. Uncertain about a server? Toss it; the system is designed to be fault tolerant. Maybe Google thinks they have to behave this way to scale. But my gut tells me they could get away with being a lot nicer and still scale. If so there is an opportunity for a competitor to move in here and surprise people with better customer service, as Zappos did in shoes. It could help to have better fraud detection technology. The more accurately you can tell the innocent from the guilty, the less draconian you need to be with the innocent. And while it sounds unlike Google to have left room to do significantly better, the way they treat the innocent implies their technology may be insufficient.
- mgkimsal 15y ago
  This is probably a great opp for regional newspapers - they have the ability to have feet on the ground, they are 'local' (ad spends keep money in the region/state/etc) - they should know something about the local/regional players/economy, etc. But... it would require an investment in technology and a commitment to customer service that most newspaper orgs probably don't have and don't want to make. Bit of a shame, as many will go away without adapting, and there are still opportunities for them to adapt/pivot and carve out new niches. Instead, they're happier to outsource all their ad stuff to big players like google.
  - shortlived 15y ago
    To the people down-voting. I'd love to hear your criticism against this idea.
    - larrys 15y ago
      "they have the ability to have feet on the ground" This is very expensive compared to an automated online system like google has. But more importantly the local papers don't have the traffic necessary in order to make this a success. And people aren't doing searches on their local newspaper website for "plumber topeka kansas" they are doing it on google.
cinquemb 15y ago
I spread the word, sorry for your problems, but they will help other people and me (and you too once you swallow your pride). Keep working at it, you got something. The fact that they are even willing to screw you tells you so.
newman314 15y ago
My personal experience with Google is that they have almost a pathological obsession with making it as hard as possible for you to get in touch with them. They operate off the notion that pretty much everything is self-service and there are no requirements for human support. When Google Enterprise first started, their only offerings were M-F, don't call us, we'll call you support. It certainly clashed quite a bit with the traditional expectation of enterprise customers.
- crag 15y ago
  There is no customer service for Google Apps besides an email. And even that, you won't get a response for days, besides a canned, "Thank you for contacting Google...". And look at their phone, which failed IMHO. One of the main reasons was the lack of customer service. Like a customer is gonna email you and wait 3 days for a reply when his phone doesn't work. And now they are about to release a tablet? Good luck.
  - newman314 15y ago
    That sucks for Android users. You want a Nexus device because it has a better chance of getting an update but otoh support sucks because it is Google. To be clear, I'm perfectly fine with Google not supporting free products (although it is good customer service to do so). However, this bad behavior applies to products and support that customers pay for which IMO is unacceptable.
alan_cx 15y ago
To me this highlights a much wider issue. Basically, you fall fowl of some web-admin and that's you banned for life with absolutely no come back what so ever. And the sad fact is that too often it boils down to a bruised ego, and then colleagues backing up their friend. I do not know what to do about it, except for an internet arbitration organisation to exist that can negotiated between a user and a web site. Problem is, it would need to be voluntary and as we all know, these sites have so many users they couldn't care less about the odd user.
leon_ 15y ago
That's the risk of putting all your eggs into one basket (no pun intended here). Back in the days when I was still creating websites and monetizing them I learned the hard way: Google killed my Adsense account and I lost a lot (back then to me) of money. After that I started diversifying - even if Adsense was most profitable back then I also mixed in other ads. And yeah - trying to reach a human being at google to resolve issues is pretty much impossible. As harsh as it sounds: Write the money off. If you get it sometime in the distant future it will be a nice surprise but don't count on the money.
csomar 15y ago
I have a similar experience, and this is why I left the Google Services thing. I signed up for Adsense 6 years ago. I worked with it for 3 years and I was making $150/month with it. Then I decided to change the payee name (was using my sisters'). I closed that account and signed up for another one. A month later, I made around $147 and got my account suspended. The reason: A risk to advertisers. I tried to contact Google but I received the same email the author did. I didn't care much, after all, it's $140. Why would Google care? But $40K? That's quite serious.
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- waqf 15y ago
  It's sad that the only way to get customer support from Google is to get to #1 on HN. It's almost worst than no support at all (because less equitable).
TomSiegel 15y ago
My name is Tom Siegel and I work on publisher and ad traffic quality at Google. Our objective us to keep fraud out of the network while ensuring a fair process with as much transparency as we can justify. We'll take a look at the cases mentioned on this thread. If anyone has additional questions or comments you can email me at tsiegel@google.com. We appreciate the feedback.
- victork2 15y ago
  Hi Tom, It's a nice gesture, but... this could have been handled way before and from the messages in this thread it seems like a very common occurrence. As somebody who wanted to use your services in the future that thread totally changed my vision of Adsense and I am exploring other companies for ads. We need you guys at Adsense to fix the problem after it happens, of course, but also beforehand because holding money for too long can kill a business. Thanks
- powertower 15y ago
  Two years ago my AdWords account was permanently suspended. I sell a fairly complicated (120k+ lines of code) .NET application (http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper) that manages the creation and hosting of websites by using the popular Apache, PHP, MySQL stack, and other apps. And I also provide support for it and the mentioned tech, the cost of which is included in the price of my software. And I've been doing this is some way or fashion since 2003. For that, I was told, my site "had been flagged for unacceptable business practices", that is, as far as I could de-crypt the support conversation... Selling free items. A big WTF moment for me. It's unlikely you can help me, but you can help others by white-listing the adwords/adsense customer service representatives’ email domains or IP blocks in Gmail... As both emails I received from them I found in my Gmail’s spam folder (pure luck on my part)! I can’t think of how many people must get the silent treatment from Google due to this blunder.
- IsolatedDress 15y ago
  Hello Tom, Quick question for you. Does Google have any statement on the thousands and thousands of small businesses that are destroyed because Google doesn't provide any realistic customer service options unless you manage to somehow get a thread to the top of Hacker News?
Matt_Mickiewicz 15y ago
Conspiracy Theory: Isn't this a great way to boost earnings before the end of a quarter? "Hey, we have a $50 million shortfall, let's close down some AdSense accounts and take their money". It's one thing to suspend an account and say "as of tomorrow, we dont want to do business with you and won't pay you for clicks going forward" - they don't have to provide a reason, they are a private company and can do whatever they want. However, when you're seizing money, whether its hundreds of dollars or tens of thousands, there needs to be proof and an appeal process. Algorithmically closing down accounts and seizing cash just doesn't work. Plus, it seems like it'd be all to easy to get a competitors account shut down by running a bot and generating fake clicks on their site...
- discountgenius 15y ago
  From the article: "Your outstanding balance and Google’s share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers.” Unless Google never refunds to "the affected advertisers," there is no motive other than preferring algorithms to humans.
crag 15y ago
The main problem here is that Google has god awful customers service. Even for their paying customer on Google Apps. Just terrible.
lancewiggs 15y ago
This is too large for a small claims court, and too small to retain lawyers and suit Google. But the USA has another, well worn, route - class action lawsuits. This seems ripe for class action, where the class is everyone who has been locked out of AdWords without reasonable explanation, or reasonable reason. What is required is a lawyer/firm to assess the amount at stake and winnability, for them to get a representative case (this one is good) and to recruit thousands or tens of thousands of members of the class. The lawyers get a huge percentage of any damages, but the class members get rewarded too, and the main issue is the Google will take notice and change their behaviour. In other countries we can use legislation to change the way Google operates. Check the jurisdiction of your contract with them - and use the appropriate system.
- erichocean 15y ago
  This is the best idea/solution I've read yet, and a clearly appropriate way (at least in the US) to deal with Google on this issue. Well done!
sojacques 15y ago
I would like to make sure that people here understand one thing. The hatchlings guys are doing it wrong. Who's to blame in this story? The guys who based their business on something they had absolutely no control on, or the company using algorithms to protect its customers (the advertisers)? I am absolutely not defending Google here, but honestly, this has been said a thousand times, ffs, do not base your business on AdSense. Better, the more people stop using AdSense, the easier it is gonna be for a competitor (your next startup?) to come, and the more chance we have to see a change coming from Google.
tszming 15y ago
I guess he will get his account back because someone at Google is looking at this now, but this also proved that their appeal system is broken for the vast majority.
orijing 15y ago
I have a question about what happens when an account gets disabled/suspended while there's a positive balance. Does Google keep that surplus, or return it to advertisers? If the former, that's truly evil, so let's say the latter. If they return to advertisers, would they suddenly see a drop in their budget spent, and number of clicks produced? For example, say I have an AdWords account and yesterday I owe Google $100 for 100 clicks, and today someone who had a balance from my ads got suspended, and they generated 2 clicks at $1 each. Does my bill go down to $98, and clicks to 98? If so, that's pretty weird. Does anyone who has an AdWords account know?
- harshreality 15y ago
  dangrossman posted a link to a screenshot showing "click quality" account credits. search this HN thread for "in the billing summary" to find it.
disordinary 15y ago
Happened to me, it sucks - luckily it was on a small site and not one that I was relying on for income. Good lesson not to rely on third party advertisements in the future.
xxiao 15y ago
when i hear "don't be evil", i immediately thought whoever said this must have something that _is_ evil, as for a typical good behaved company, it does not need say this loudly to itself or somebody else, in fact, this kind of slogan will not even come to its mind at all.
Havoc 15y ago
The number of comments mentioning similar events are frightening. I always thought these were isolated incidents, flukes if you like. Apparently not.
sampsonjs 15y ago
If they're screwing people over, sounds like it's time for a lawsuit, not yearning for a startup white knight to ride to the rescue.
mccabe44 15y ago
Google seems to be very good at what they are doing to it's customers & will continue to do so until someone in that company wakes up & smells the garbage they hand out. Hatchlings is not the first small enterprise they have taken advantage of nor are the people who invest their time & money in said "game" the first or the last. Delve into another of Facebook's "games" called SuperPokePets (SPP) originally brought to FB by a company called Slide that Google decided wasn't raking in the big bucks fast enough so executives in Google decide to stop the game with a minimal warning to it's customers. SPP in all aspects that we the users could see was making plenty of money to keep the game active but instead higher-ups decided to hang it up causing loss of fun & incredible hurt to thousands of children and their parents. Google is a very selfish,greedy, animal. They will,I hope, eventually find themselves with very few customers,advertisers,or money which they value the most. Corporate greed does not go unpunished in this world anymore. They took people's trust & their money then hung us all out to dry without an apology or a reasonable explanation. I see no reason to give them anymore of my time or my money.

710 points by mikeknoop 15y ago

I hate to suggest this. I repeat, I really hate to suggest this: It is time for those affected to unite behind a push to initiate Congressional action against Google (and possibly others) for these practice. They are highly destructive and unfair. These companies ARE huge monopolies. They just can't be allowed to behave this way. I am the first one to raise my voice against more government incursions into our daily lives. However, there are cases where very few options remain on the table. Unless Google, eBay, Paypal and others who are committing these kinds of acts on a daily basis change their tune in a hurry I think that a collision with government action is unavoidable. A united front with government backing is probably the only viable option.

vaksel 15y ago
alternatively, Google can be slapped with a class action lawsuit I know their emails always say "we've refunded your money to the advertiser"...but has anyone seen proof of this? Any of you that advertise with Adwords Content...ever see a refund for any clicks?
- capo 15y ago
  I imagine if the advertisers weren't receiving refunds they would be the ones contemplating a class action.
- sjs382 15y ago
  > Any of you that advertise with Adwords Content...ever see a refund for any clicks? Yes
- dangrossman 15y ago
  > ever see a refund for any clicks? Yes, all the time. Here's what it looks like in the billing summary: http://i.imgur.com/JVSVO.png http://i.imgur.com/JVSVO.png The alt text for the question mark graphic: "Your account has been credited for invalid clicks that escaped automatic detection."
capo 15y ago
So when they are lenient with policing ads they get sued for click-fraud and when they are strict then the government should intervene?! surly there must be a third option.
nitrogen 15y ago
As I said in my response to you 23 days ago[0], we have to be very careful that whatever we ask Congress to do doesn't get warped into something that protects eBay, Google, and PayPal against smaller competitors, e.g. by imposing a mandatory per-customer cost that is untenable for startups. In the case of AdSense, if such a measure proves absolutely necessary, perhaps the remedy should be as simple as requiring those disabled accounts who prove they are a real life human to be able to communicate with a real life human at Google to discuss the evidence against their account. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3697448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3697448
- robomartin 15y ago
  Absolutely agreed. In my opinion, Government is the least desirable option in all cases. It's a hatchet when you need a scalpel. Yet, here we are, 23 days later (interesting that you remembered) having the same discussion. This is happening with far greater frequency than publicly exposed. I've seen it first hand. You have to wonder what Google's trail of destruction might look like. In the end these are families and businesses that are being affected in very signifiant ways. If one were to want to play the populist card, you could also say that jobs might be lost (or not created) when Google takes actions that damage or destroy company revenue streams. Also agree that it is not a simple problem to solve. That said, if the problem is too big for Google to deal with it then maybe they should stick with search and bow out of the ad serving business. A company as large as Google can't be compelled to make changes by one or a few individuals voicing their concerns. This is the fundamental problem. If they were good netizens they'd jump at the opportunity to fix the problem, no matter how difficult it might be. Hire another 100 engineers and figure it out. The threat of a force greater than theirs might just be the only reason to compel a company as powerful as Google to make changes. That, perhaps, is my greater point. I really don't want to see government regulate any of it. But I am not opposed to using government to force change or capitulation when few other options appear to be viable.
robomartin 15y ago
Let me also be constructive and suggest ways in which Google could make this process fair. First of all, don't make the process an digital on/off decision. Create a system of staged penalties leading up to account suspension and then, if abused, closure. New accounts should have an "on-boarding" process in place. It would be OK to tell the site that, for the first 30 days ads will be presented and NO revenue will be paid to the site. This is a monitoring period where Google can just watch and see how the site behaves. During the following 90 days revenue is slowly notched up from 0% to 100%. Again, close monitoring and feedback during this period is critical. If and when a problem occurs, Google is to provide clearly understandable data on the relevant violations and suggestions on fixing them. One argument against this is that, if they made their violation detection data public, spammers will use the data to get even better. Well, so be it. Use this to develop even better detection technology. Last I heard Google is staffed with pretty smart folk. Solve the problem! After clearly flagging the relevant problems give the account owner a reasonable length of time to fix it. Say, three days from receipt of the notice. If the problem is not fixed in the alloted time then ad revenues start to be discounted based on some well-explained formula. Maybe 10% per day. This should provide enough incentive for a lazy site owner to take action. This could also come with staged penalization of the site-standing in search. This could be controversial. Maybe not. This could also have an element of a reduction of the CPM revenue on ads served into the site. Once the revenue reaches zero ad placement stops. Perhaps there's the option for Google to serve non-ads with text noting that this site is in violation of AdSense rules. I can thing of few things that'll wake someone up more than having all of your ad locations populated with such a notice. Despite all of the above, the account is never killed off except for the most egregious cases. Having all ad revenue shut down the site is given a full report --with clear reasons-- of the violations and the timeline to ad-serving shutdown. AND, how to fix it. The site could be suspended from AdSense for thirty days, during which they have to show that they fixed the problems. Once the problems are fixed a staged restart of ad-serving would begin. At first the site would start being served with a few ads and they'd only earn, say, 50% of normal revenue. Over a period of three months of "good behavior" the sites ads would increase and improve. And, of course, the percentage of revenue earned per ad would notch back up to 100%. Oh, yes, if the account holder owns multiple sites on one AdSense account the sites ought to be treated separately. If one site is having problems but there's another that is in perfect standing account actions should only affect the site that needs to fix problems and not the entire account. I'm sure the above has holes. It is probably a reasonable start for a framework that could fix the problem. I've had the experience of having legitimate and above-honest clients get banned from AdSense for, well, we'll never know. The problem with the way Google runs this is that there's no way to make an honest mistake. This is very easy to do when you are just getting started. It's not fair.
chc 15y ago
If Google is so bad at this, wouldn't a better approach be to start or support an alternative ad network that does what you want? You sound extremely confident that Google is doing a horrible job in this space, so a competitor should just be able to do better and eat their lunch. As far as I know, Google hasn't been accused of any anticompetitive behavior, so they're not stopping you. That would be much less radical than lobbying Congress for some vaguely defined "action". I suspect you will find that once you get to a scale similar to Google's, you'll find yourself making similar tradeoffs. You could probably be a little better, but I don't think it's possible to be both forgiving and resilient against fraudsters. EDIT: On rereading, this sounded a little bit passive-aggressive, so I've rephrased it a bit. Hopefully it comes across more as an observation and less like an attack now.
- dangrossman 15y ago
  You could run the exact same fraud systems and policies, but also offer customer support. It's not the fraud systems that are preventing competitors, it's achieving the critical mass of advertisers to offer competitive ad fill and revenue rates. It doesn't matter if you're the friendliest company in the world if you can't provide enough ads to pay as much, or anywhere near, what Google will pay the same site.

misterjangles 15y ago

It's frightening that this would happen to a company that actually has a relationship with google in as much as having an account rep. Those of us nobodys who are just running generic ads with no personal contact would have no recourse at all. I will say though, in every one of these cases there is always a little something odd. You never read about this happening without some small thing that was wonky about the setup. In this case there's a mention of the personal site without any details of what that is. I'd be curious to know what that was. Even still, it sounds like a gross over-reaction.

discountgenius 15y ago
Even if the "personal site" is kinkybattledungeonsandfoodfights.com, any account holder has the right to know what they did wrong.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- JoachimSchipper 15y ago
  That policy is not compatible with keeping the seedier side of the internet in the dark about the algorithms used, which is why Google doesn't do that. (You can disagree with this, obviously, but Google does have its reasons.)
  - mladenkovacevic 15y ago
    Sorry, can you explain a little more about this? How would e-mailing the account holder and telling them what they did wrong reveal the structure of the algorithm?
    - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
      If you're trying to scam Google (e.g. via click fraud), being told exactly how you were detected is rather useful if you want to be more successful next time.

zupreme 15y ago

This is a textbook example of why it's never smart to hinge one's profitability upon the whims of another company. I've been down these paths with Adsense, EPN, and others and I learned the hard way that affiliate programs and ad revenue can be booming one day and gone the next. Now I only build PaaS and SaaS sites (not counting freelancing work on the side) and I'm a lot happier with a much more stable income from my web apps that is not dependent on the whims of anybody.

civilian 15y ago
SaaS is "software as a service" but what is PaaS? Can you give an example?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- farnsworth 15y ago
  Platform as a service - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service
- borski 15y ago
  PaaS is "Platform-as-a-Service." Heroku is a good example.
- Mystitat 15y ago
  "Platform as a Service" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service
- knowtheory 15y ago
  Platform As A Service. Heroku & Amazon Web Services are both examples. In fact, they're nested examples!
  - ghaff 15y ago
    Actually, AWS is generally categorized as Infrastructure-as-a-Service--although it's added a number of higher-level services that are more PaaS-like. (EC2 and S3 are definitely IaaS level. Elastic Beanstalk is pretty much a PaaS. Other services are in-between.)

mistercow 15y ago

This is actually an incredibly common practice of Google's, although in most cases they only make off with a few hundred dollars of ad revenue. I personally had it happen to me with a blog. They accused me a of "click fraud", disabled my account, and disappeared with the money they owed me. I did some research and found the same story repeated dozens of times. This has been going on for years. Basically, Google's policies mean that if you don't like a website which uses AdSense for revenue, you can screw over the owner by sitting at their site and repeatedly clicking their ads. Google will see the "fraud", assume it was the site owner doing it, and shut down their account with little to no opportunity for appeal.

JustinChaschowy 15y ago
Also, something incredible is that there are measures to take to disable this ability for saboteurs. Scripting that will only display the adsense advertisement once per IP visiting your site... yet guess what, Google disallows this practice!
ajross 15y ago
The second paragraph seems like something one could test. Have you? Fraud detection is just hard. And my expectation is that for every legitimate friendly fire instance there are six or ten "marginal fraudsters" trying to spin their troubles with Google via blog posts like the one in the link. I clicked on this thinking it would be a clear case of Google doing something "evil", and had to read through very carefully before I figured out that it was just another account freeze. Meh. If it's seriously $40k, then sue them and figure out what really happened in discovery. That would be a blog post I'd want to read.
- mistercow 15y ago
  >The second paragraph seems like something one could test. I do not think it would be ethical to test it directly. But you don't have to search far to find people who have had their accounts crashed by angry exes.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago

knodi 15y ago

The issue with google ads is that it only takes one bad vistor to get your ad sense account disabled. Go ahead find a site with google ads start clicking the google ad over and over again until your IP is flagged (ads won't be displayed based on your IP). With in 30 days the sites ad-sense account will be disabled.

zupreme 15y ago
My assumption is that in 99% of the cases the revenue Google misses out on by terminating the accounts of site owners who experience the type of victimization is less than what they would spend in man-hours on investigating the matter to differentiate legitimate victimization from actual click-fraud.
ktizo 15y ago
Surely it cannot be that basic? If it is, then it would be relatively simple to automate this behaviour from a range of IPs and disable the accounts of hundreds, if not thousands of ad-sense customers.
- zupreme 15y ago
  Actually, what you have proposed is exactly the approach that some black-hat practitioners have used to hide click-fraud. Some guys will setup a script to go to 5 sites (for example) and click ads on all of them. Their site will be one of the 5. All of the site owners make money, as do they, and because it's distributed across multiple sites, Google does not flag the activity as blatant click-fraud. If you spend any time a BHW you will see these schemes over and over again, along with people claiming to make hundreds of dollars per day "on autopilot"....
  - ktizo 15y ago
    That is similar, but I was meaning it less in terms of hiding click-fraud and more in terms of click-fraud-fraud, which would have a far more devastating effect on googles customers and if it was widespread enough would be horrendously bad for google as well.

JoachimSchipper 15y ago

[Edited at ~15min, original comment below] This "personal site" was http://guitarhero-4.com http://guitarhero-4.com, which was a thin affiliate site using a brand name without permission (ref: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803696 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803696, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803746 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803746). I think we've found the problem... [EDIT: original comment was: Looking at http://web.archive.org/web/20110203092609/http://guitarhero-5.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20110203092609/http://guitarhero-... (via http://i.imgur.com/wWyNd.png http://i.imgur.com/wWyNd.png), it appears that this "personal site" was a seedy affiliate site using a brand name without permission. I think we've found the problem...]

scott_s 15y ago
I am completely unable to follow your post. Instead of editing comments to include corrections, upvote and respond to the corrections.
- DanBC 15y ago
  The original comment used the word "seedy". It was edited to "thin affiliate" which is less hostile.
- JoachimSchipper 15y ago
  My apologies. The original comment referenced guitarhero-5.com, but apparently this was a typo by the Google affiliate and should have been guitarhero-4.com (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803746 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803746). This would completely invalidate my comment, prompting me to delete it, except that guitarhero-4.com is also a thin affiliate site - so the original point stands. But my post is indeed confusing, my apologies.
draggnar 15y ago
She told him to take it down and he did. Where is the problem?
yeldarb 15y ago

Foy 15y ago

That's the main problem with automating as much as possible, and having as few customer service reps as possible. It feels like talking to a brick wall when something non-standard happens. If this issue gets resolved in light of the publicity it's now getting, it just further shows that the Google system is deeply flawed for it's users.

pgrote 15y ago

What else could Hatchlings have done to prevent this? I know people are saying, "don't rely on someone else for your profitibility", but if you are going to work with Google what other steps can you take? He seems to have done all the right things: 1) Found an account manager. 2) Formed relationships with public google folks. 3) Opened discussions to further integration through continued sales.

zupreme 15y ago
Assuming that his accounting of the facts is accurate, he did do all of the right things. That's why the "Dont rely..." comments are relevant. The affiliate-program market (and that's all Adsense is - a unique form of affiliate program) is almost universally open to this type of abuse. Would you want to work for a company where you never got to meet or talk to your employer, you never knew for sure how much your paycheck would be, or exactly when it would be mailed/deposited? That's what we all do when we signup for Adsense.

IsolatedDress 15y ago

Posting under a throwaway account because I do not want Google to try and screw me over further. Hatchlings will probably get their money back because this achieved some measure of popularity on a major site and this makes Google look like crap. If you're one of the thousands and thousands of small businesses that Google has screwed over, this is about the only way you'll ever get your money back because GOOGLE DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT STEALING YOUR MONEY AND DESTROYING YOUR BUSINESS. Everybody that loves Google because they talk a nice game about a free and open society and release some open source projects and say nice things about doing no evil should realize that their customer service is practically non-existent on purpose so they can steal your money easier. The only way to get your money back is to make them look bad. I hope more people publicize Google's actions in many of these cases so people would realize what a chance you're taking when you do any kind of business with Google. And think...this is is a guy with an actual account manager at Google...how bad do you think they treat the average small business that just does a few hundred or thousand dollars of ads and depends on that money to pay people?

ambiate 15y ago

I lost my Adsense account two years ago, due to valid violations. This saddened me, and was the end of web development for me. The stats were my heroine. Fast forward to Spring break of this year, I developed a few Android apps and one took off. I signed up for AdMob in early March. I kept clean and got my fill of daily stats and was once again happy with my new home on the internet. Fast forward a week and a half, I get an alert saying Admob accounts will be merged with Adsense, uh oh. I was generating decent income at this point, because let's face it, the Android market is just wide open. I decided to make my second appeal to Adsense, 2 years later, asking for another chance and explaining my understanding of the previous violations. I noted my clean record on Admob and my apps as my reason for appealing. 6 hours later, my AdMob account is banned without any kind of notification. My wife looks over at me and wonders why I'm so sad at the laptop after 10 hours of class. It had become my daily habit to kiss my wife and check the AdMob stats. It's not actually about making money, it is something about watching the growth/lotto. So, I have now given up on Android apps and just disabled all but the most popular one. I removed ads and cleaned up my last push. I wish there was some type of leniency. My wife offered to make an account in her name and just take over my Android apps, but the initial thrill is gone. There is a looming realization of Google controlling the majority of online advertising and that one mistake will probably haunt me for many years/services to come.

typpo 15y ago
When I was 12, I built apps to automate MMOs. I was making about $350/mo. from AdSense - not bad money for a kid my age - when my account was shut down on the last day of the billing cycle (ie., the day before they were going to send me a check). After some initial disappointment I changed to a subscription model, which increased my profit by an order of magnitude and incentivized me to work a lot harder on creating a quality product. Because of this, I don't regard my AdSense shutdown as a bad thing. Knowing nothing about the sort of apps you make, I'd encourage you to try to explore more options to monetize them. Clearly a number of people were using your apps. A different approach to monetization may be just as thrilling and rewarding.
- seanp2k2 15y ago

conradfr 15y ago

It happened to me for a blog where adsense was removed for years. I moved my adwords campain for other business sites since then and advocate it when I can.

mcbaby 15y ago

DuckDuckGo

elliottcarlson 15y ago
I am downvoting you because this adds nothing to the discussion. While DDG may be a worthy search engine and a good alternative to Google as a search destination, it does not offer an alternative or a solution to the problem that is AdSense related.
- elliottcarlson 15y ago
  (for those downvoting him further - there's no reason to get him hell banned, pretty sure he got the point!)

mikecane 15y ago

Is it my imagination or have I seen many "Google Screwed Us" posts and never one "Google Made It All Right" posts? It seems to me to be the opposite of Amazon, where I've seen many glowing posts about CS and very few posts about things going incredibly bad. Edit: Amazon is also relevant due to their Android app store and soon in-app purchasing. I expect them to start an ad network for apps too.

Tichy 15y ago
It's just human nature to put more energy into it if you are being screwed over. I think product ratings have the same problem (unhappy customers more likely to comment than happy customers).
gcp 15y ago
Amazon has an easy to find customer service that replies to your questions quickly and makes things right. Google makes it very hard to find or contact anyone. Unless they're selling your their site optimization services. I'm sure Amazon spends way more money in keeping their customers happy. They seem to realize this is good for repeat business.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  >Google makes it very hard to find or contact anyone. // They make it pretty hard to initiate what should be a completely hands-off (for them) error report too. For example on Google Shopping they virtually always lie about the purchase price for goods that you find, then the top listed suppliers also lie about the price too. There's no [simple, visible or accessible] way to report either situation. From Google's POV this should be an automated system. Once complaints breach n then check that the listed lowest price equals the "best" price of those listed by suppliers. If not then correct the lowest price returned for that query. If complaints for a retailers price for a good breach m then scrape the on-page price (preferably using an anonymous IP) and compare with the retailers reported price on G Shopping. If there is a difference correct the difference, admonish the retailer and decrease the retailers reputation score. When reputation score is below x remove the retailer and send them a "naughty-naughty" letter. Why the advertising standards/trading standards people aren't issuing massive fines to Google and their associates for false advertising in this way I'm not sure.

officialchicken 15y ago

Thank you for sharing, and preventing me from potentially falling into this trap. I was considering doing an ad based project until I read this.

campnic 15y ago
So, you should balance this. There are lots of people out there that do well serving ads. It really depends on your product and your alternative avenues to revenue. It is a cautionary tale, but you shouldn't close the door because of that.

Steko 15y ago

"I realize that this probably wasn’t done maliciously and that we were probably caught up in some algorithm gone awry" I realize the diplomatic and empathic intent here but to me the whole episode is really damning if this is how they handle customers. Depriving people of payment for services rendered goes several steps beyond plain old shitty customer service.

web_chops 15y ago

Wow, this makes Paypal look like angels. I suppose we are just starting see the effects of ad monopoly. Once a few more alternatives are taken away, there will be no where to hide.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

powertower 15y ago

My own experience: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3576084 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3576084

user24 15y ago

When Google inevitably smooth this over to avoid the bad PR, just spare a thought for the hundreds of smaller sites who don't have the option to generate that kind of press (Google screwed me out of $50 on my blog about kittens doesn't have the same ring to it)

kposehn 15y ago

Unfortunately, this is a reality of using AdSense. I have never encountered anyone at Google that is malicious and/or gleeful about this happening. The lack of response comes down to the fact that Google would rather make sure they get all bad actors and throw out some good than be more lenient and let some bad actors stay. There are tens of thousands of AdSense spammers that try to take advantage of the system. 30-40% of impressions on Google Content Network ads (which run on AdSense) are complete junk. These impressions are via sites that take advantage of how easy it is to get in to make a quick buck before Google catches them. The ecosystem perpetuates itself because Google's priority is to maximize overall reach in the market: the more people using AdSense, the more impressions they get and the more people cookie'd for behavioral data. There is little concern with banning people unjustifiably as they have a different priority. Hatchlings did the right thing by diversifying and if you rely on AdSense, then you should to. Make sure you work with several networks (many pay better anyway) and look for other sources of revenue. This is what separates the sad stories from successes.

feralchimp 15y ago
> The lack of response comes down to the fact that Google would rather make sure they get all bad actors and throw out some good than be more lenient and let some bad actors stay. If that's indeed their attitude, then they deserve to burn long and hot over this shit. And nothing excuses a shutdown in communication, period. The lesson (to me) is "don't rely on AdSense for any make/break percentage of your revenue."
- darksaga 15y ago
  Agreed. I've had several bad experiences with Google's AdSense and it was a real pain in the ass to deal with them. They suspected one of my accounts of click fraud and it took almost 2 years of back and forth to finally get my money back. Even after all of that, they never reinstated my account. My general attitude is the same, "Don't rely on Google for anything in which some kind of monetary relationship is involved." It's just not worth it - ever.
stfu 15y ago
The problem is, that Google's behavior creates a culture of cheating. When things become so obviously unfair, people are increasingly forced to solve the problems in "other" ways. While their actions may make sense in the short run (i.e. its just a few annoying web"masters"), the long term effects of being perceived as an unfair institution that is okay to trick seems to be more severe.

EGreg 15y ago

Why would google sooner disable a site showing ads and remove all revenue streams, than simply stop showing ads to "repeated" violators (based on IP, or whatever else they use to detect clickfraud) on that site, and only refund money made by THAT SECTOR the clicks came from?

Toddward 15y ago
Presumably, Google assumes that the account owner is the person or entity committing the click fraud and will find ways to continue perpetrating the fraud if only an IP or range is blocked. It's probably much less of a headache to just nuke an account than play a game of cat and mouse with fraudsters.

adsenseclient 15y ago

Posting from a throwaway handle, so that there is no way that Google would track me down. Our company uses AdSense, and we have not been disabled so far. Our monthly revenues are much larger than Hatchling's. We have user-generated content. Despite our MOST extensive, multi-tier keyword-based content screening system, we are terrorized by Google weekly, from noreply address, that AdSense ads are disabled on this or that user's page, due to various violations found (often in the content in obscure languages, e.g. Hungarian , Finnish, Turkish), threatening to shut down the whole account. We are aware that the account can be shut down at any moment, and have been diversifying our ad revenue component for the last couple of years, using CasaleMedia, TribalFusion, Adbrite, taking conscious cuts in ad revenue compared to AdSense in exchange for security. Those companies actually care about your revenue. DO NOT RELY on ADSENSE as a sole revenue provider for your startup! Do not! AdSense is only a good idea either if your revenue is negligible, or if you are a highly public high profile client like MySpace, where they KNOW that they cannot get away without serious negative PR.

gcp 15y ago
Thanks for bringing up some Adsense alternatives.
cft 15y ago
On my opinion, this is why Google Payments never took off: they used the same smart-ass approach to shut down merchant accounts, knowing when a merchant was about to commit payment fraud before it was actually committed. In the case of sale of physical goods, an account termination could be much more harmful, so people stuck with PayPal, no matter how imperfect it was.
- waqf 15y ago
  I don't understand. If you're smart enough to shut down an account before it does anything fraudulent, then you have no conceivable excuse not to pay the balance out when you close the account.
  - shingen 15y ago

GigabyteCoin 15y ago

I was banned from adsense about 6 years ago... using my main personal email account. I tried to log back in a few times over the years, and after about 4 or 5 years I was told that they no longer had any record of my account. I signed up again (using the same email and personal information) without a hitch. I have been receiving checks for many months now.

grecy 15y ago

You may want to read "Why I sued Google and won" [1]. The guy has a similar story to yours, sued Google for the revenue already earned, and won all of it (it was only ~$700). For $40k, I'd sure look into it. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-google-and-won_b_172403.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-goo...

cft 15y ago
If you read the follow-up, you will see that he actually lost an appeal by Google: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-bothered-to-ap_b_213176.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-bot...
- ceejayoz 15y ago
  In particular: > Despite Google's objections to what they perceived to be technical violations of their AdSense terms of service, they also had an entirely separate (but confusingly similar-sounding) program called AdSense for Domains, which handled the exact problem I was trying to solve--that of using advertising to profit from "parked," or unused, domain names, much like putting a billboard on a vacant lot. Though AdSense for Domains was closed to the public for years, Google did finally open it up December 11, 2008, just two days after my account was cancelled. Had it allowed my company to join in the first place, I would have had no reason to create my own billboard using "normal" AdSense since Google would have already taken care of it for me, and no violation would have occurred. "If Google would've let me into their private club I wouldn't have had to trespass in it" probably didn't sit too well with the judge.
mattdeboard 15y ago
Except that case was appealed by Google, and the judgment was cancelled.

jayp 15y ago

Great timing on the article. Easter is here... good way to acquire new customers in the "festive" mood. As the cliché goes: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

Tomis 15y ago

On an unrelated note: > Sorry, due to a security vulnerability this browser is not supported. You might like Google Chrome. I actually hate Google Chrome, it's Internet Explorer 6 with a service pack. You don't support Opera? Seriously? For a long time Opera has been the most secure browser on the market, I don't know it's status in the last year. What security hole?

yeldarb 15y ago
They don't honor no-cache headers in the same way that all other browsers do which allows for duplication of virtual goods in some cases. We've spoken with their dev team but it's apparently a "feature" not a bug. Our V2 that is coming out soon will definitely support Opera though.

adharmad 15y ago

There should be a sub-clause to "Don't Be Evil": "Don't Be Indifferent".

curiouscats 15y ago
There is. Being indifferent, in certain situations, is being evil. And Google isn't being indifferent here, there is well documented extreme hardship created by Google's choice to operate in the way they do. They know this and choose to continue their behavior. It appears as long as Google believes it is more profitable to act in this way they will continue to do so. I would imagine (based on their actions and words) if this behavior was to negatively impact their estimates of their profits then they would change.

pg 15y ago

When things are this broken, it's an opportunity. Maybe it's time for someone to start an AdSense competitor whose focus is customer service. It seems to be deeply embedded in Google's DNA not so much to abuse AdSense users as to treat them like components in a machine. They treat AdSense users much as they do servers. Uncertain about a server? Toss it; the system is designed to be fault tolerant. Maybe Google thinks they have to behave this way to scale. But my gut tells me they could get away with being a lot nicer and still scale. If so there is an opportunity for a competitor to move in here and surprise people with better customer service, as Zappos did in shoes. It could help to have better fraud detection technology. The more accurately you can tell the innocent from the guilty, the less draconian you need to be with the innocent. And while it sounds unlike Google to have left room to do significantly better, the way they treat the innocent implies their technology may be insufficient.

mgkimsal 15y ago
This is probably a great opp for regional newspapers - they have the ability to have feet on the ground, they are 'local' (ad spends keep money in the region/state/etc) - they should know something about the local/regional players/economy, etc. But... it would require an investment in technology and a commitment to customer service that most newspaper orgs probably don't have and don't want to make. Bit of a shame, as many will go away without adapting, and there are still opportunities for them to adapt/pivot and carve out new niches. Instead, they're happier to outsource all their ad stuff to big players like google.
- shortlived 15y ago
  To the people down-voting. I'd love to hear your criticism against this idea.
  - larrys 15y ago
    "they have the ability to have feet on the ground" This is very expensive compared to an automated online system like google has. But more importantly the local papers don't have the traffic necessary in order to make this a success. And people aren't doing searches on their local newspaper website for "plumber topeka kansas" they are doing it on google.

cinquemb 15y ago

I spread the word, sorry for your problems, but they will help other people and me (and you too once you swallow your pride). Keep working at it, you got something. The fact that they are even willing to screw you tells you so.

newman314 15y ago

My personal experience with Google is that they have almost a pathological obsession with making it as hard as possible for you to get in touch with them. They operate off the notion that pretty much everything is self-service and there are no requirements for human support. When Google Enterprise first started, their only offerings were M-F, don't call us, we'll call you support. It certainly clashed quite a bit with the traditional expectation of enterprise customers.

crag 15y ago
There is no customer service for Google Apps besides an email. And even that, you won't get a response for days, besides a canned, "Thank you for contacting Google...". And look at their phone, which failed IMHO. One of the main reasons was the lack of customer service. Like a customer is gonna email you and wait 3 days for a reply when his phone doesn't work. And now they are about to release a tablet? Good luck.
- newman314 15y ago
  That sucks for Android users. You want a Nexus device because it has a better chance of getting an update but otoh support sucks because it is Google. To be clear, I'm perfectly fine with Google not supporting free products (although it is good customer service to do so). However, this bad behavior applies to products and support that customers pay for which IMO is unacceptable.

alan_cx 15y ago

To me this highlights a much wider issue. Basically, you fall fowl of some web-admin and that's you banned for life with absolutely no come back what so ever. And the sad fact is that too often it boils down to a bruised ego, and then colleagues backing up their friend. I do not know what to do about it, except for an internet arbitration organisation to exist that can negotiated between a user and a web site. Problem is, it would need to be voluntary and as we all know, these sites have so many users they couldn't care less about the odd user.

leon_ 15y ago

That's the risk of putting all your eggs into one basket (no pun intended here). Back in the days when I was still creating websites and monetizing them I learned the hard way: Google killed my Adsense account and I lost a lot (back then to me) of money. After that I started diversifying - even if Adsense was most profitable back then I also mixed in other ads. And yeah - trying to reach a human being at google to resolve issues is pretty much impossible. As harsh as it sounds: Write the money off. If you get it sometime in the distant future it will be a nice surprise but don't count on the money.

csomar 15y ago

I have a similar experience, and this is why I left the Google Services thing. I signed up for Adsense 6 years ago. I worked with it for 3 years and I was making $150/month with it. Then I decided to change the payee name (was using my sisters'). I closed that account and signed up for another one. A month later, I made around $147 and got my account suspended. The reason: A risk to advertisers. I tried to contact Google but I received the same email the author did. I didn't care much, after all, it's $140. Why would Google care? But $40K? That's quite serious.

deleted 15y ago

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waqf 15y ago
It's sad that the only way to get customer support from Google is to get to #1 on HN. It's almost worst than no support at all (because less equitable).

TomSiegel 15y ago

My name is Tom Siegel and I work on publisher and ad traffic quality at Google. Our objective us to keep fraud out of the network while ensuring a fair process with as much transparency as we can justify. We'll take a look at the cases mentioned on this thread. If anyone has additional questions or comments you can email me at tsiegel@google.com. We appreciate the feedback.

victork2 15y ago
Hi Tom, It's a nice gesture, but... this could have been handled way before and from the messages in this thread it seems like a very common occurrence. As somebody who wanted to use your services in the future that thread totally changed my vision of Adsense and I am exploring other companies for ads. We need you guys at Adsense to fix the problem after it happens, of course, but also beforehand because holding money for too long can kill a business. Thanks
powertower 15y ago
Two years ago my AdWords account was permanently suspended. I sell a fairly complicated (120k+ lines of code) .NET application (http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper) that manages the creation and hosting of websites by using the popular Apache, PHP, MySQL stack, and other apps. And I also provide support for it and the mentioned tech, the cost of which is included in the price of my software. And I've been doing this is some way or fashion since 2003. For that, I was told, my site "had been flagged for unacceptable business practices", that is, as far as I could de-crypt the support conversation... Selling free items. A big WTF moment for me. It's unlikely you can help me, but you can help others by white-listing the adwords/adsense customer service representatives’ email domains or IP blocks in Gmail... As both emails I received from them I found in my Gmail’s spam folder (pure luck on my part)! I can’t think of how many people must get the silent treatment from Google due to this blunder.
IsolatedDress 15y ago
Hello Tom, Quick question for you. Does Google have any statement on the thousands and thousands of small businesses that are destroyed because Google doesn't provide any realistic customer service options unless you manage to somehow get a thread to the top of Hacker News?

Matt_Mickiewicz 15y ago

Conspiracy Theory: Isn't this a great way to boost earnings before the end of a quarter? "Hey, we have a $50 million shortfall, let's close down some AdSense accounts and take their money". It's one thing to suspend an account and say "as of tomorrow, we dont want to do business with you and won't pay you for clicks going forward" - they don't have to provide a reason, they are a private company and can do whatever they want. However, when you're seizing money, whether its hundreds of dollars or tens of thousands, there needs to be proof and an appeal process. Algorithmically closing down accounts and seizing cash just doesn't work. Plus, it seems like it'd be all to easy to get a competitors account shut down by running a bot and generating fake clicks on their site...

discountgenius 15y ago
From the article: "Your outstanding balance and Google’s share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers.” Unless Google never refunds to "the affected advertisers," there is no motive other than preferring algorithms to humans.

crag 15y ago

The main problem here is that Google has god awful customers service. Even for their paying customer on Google Apps. Just terrible.

lancewiggs 15y ago

This is too large for a small claims court, and too small to retain lawyers and suit Google. But the USA has another, well worn, route - class action lawsuits. This seems ripe for class action, where the class is everyone who has been locked out of AdWords without reasonable explanation, or reasonable reason. What is required is a lawyer/firm to assess the amount at stake and winnability, for them to get a representative case (this one is good) and to recruit thousands or tens of thousands of members of the class. The lawyers get a huge percentage of any damages, but the class members get rewarded too, and the main issue is the Google will take notice and change their behaviour. In other countries we can use legislation to change the way Google operates. Check the jurisdiction of your contract with them - and use the appropriate system.

erichocean 15y ago
This is the best idea/solution I've read yet, and a clearly appropriate way (at least in the US) to deal with Google on this issue. Well done!

sojacques 15y ago

I would like to make sure that people here understand one thing. The hatchlings guys are doing it wrong. Who's to blame in this story? The guys who based their business on something they had absolutely no control on, or the company using algorithms to protect its customers (the advertisers)? I am absolutely not defending Google here, but honestly, this has been said a thousand times, ffs, do not base your business on AdSense. Better, the more people stop using AdSense, the easier it is gonna be for a competitor (your next startup?) to come, and the more chance we have to see a change coming from Google.

tszming 15y ago

I guess he will get his account back because someone at Google is looking at this now, but this also proved that their appeal system is broken for the vast majority.

orijing 15y ago

I have a question about what happens when an account gets disabled/suspended while there's a positive balance. Does Google keep that surplus, or return it to advertisers? If the former, that's truly evil, so let's say the latter. If they return to advertisers, would they suddenly see a drop in their budget spent, and number of clicks produced? For example, say I have an AdWords account and yesterday I owe Google $100 for 100 clicks, and today someone who had a balance from my ads got suspended, and they generated 2 clicks at $1 each. Does my bill go down to $98, and clicks to 98? If so, that's pretty weird. Does anyone who has an AdWords account know?

harshreality 15y ago
dangrossman posted a link to a screenshot showing "click quality" account credits. search this HN thread for "in the billing summary" to find it.

disordinary 15y ago

Happened to me, it sucks - luckily it was on a small site and not one that I was relying on for income. Good lesson not to rely on third party advertisements in the future.

xxiao 15y ago

when i hear "don't be evil", i immediately thought whoever said this must have something that _is_ evil, as for a typical good behaved company, it does not need say this loudly to itself or somebody else, in fact, this kind of slogan will not even come to its mind at all.

Havoc 15y ago

The number of comments mentioning similar events are frightening. I always thought these were isolated incidents, flukes if you like. Apparently not.

sampsonjs 15y ago

If they're screwing people over, sounds like it's time for a lawsuit, not yearning for a startup white knight to ride to the rescue.

mccabe44 15y ago

Google seems to be very good at what they are doing to it's customers & will continue to do so until someone in that company wakes up & smells the garbage they hand out. Hatchlings is not the first small enterprise they have taken advantage of nor are the people who invest their time & money in said "game" the first or the last. Delve into another of Facebook's "games" called SuperPokePets (SPP) originally brought to FB by a company called Slide that Google decided wasn't raking in the big bucks fast enough so executives in Google decide to stop the game with a minimal warning to it's customers. SPP in all aspects that we the users could see was making plenty of money to keep the game active but instead higher-ups decided to hang it up causing loss of fun & incredible hurt to thousands of children and their parents. Google is a very selfish,greedy, animal. They will,I hope, eventually find themselves with very few customers,advertisers,or money which they value the most. Corporate greed does not go unpunished in this world anymore. They took people's trust & their money then hung us all out to dry without an apology or a reasonable explanation. I see no reason to give them anymore of my time or my money.