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Am I the only one sypathetic to Google here? It seems to me that this guy's self-righteousness is based on a serious misunderstanding: After pointing out that

• davidw 17y ago
  > Am I the only one sypathetic to Google here? Legally, I think they're right. Morally? Not really.
  • jm4 17y ago
    I agree. I remember when the first story circulated. It seemed a little fishy and it wasn't entirely clear what terms of service the guy violated, if any at all. Now, it's pretty clear that he did violate the terms of service and didn't have much of a case in the first place. It's ridiculous, though, that it had to be taken this far in order for him to get a straight answer. I think you really have to question the judgment of the people that, through flawed policies or otherwise, allowed this to happen. Even if things were allowed to start spiraling out of control it seems like there were opportunities to resolve this at a much lower cost-- both financial and in terms of public image. Why not make a phone call to see what it's all about before sending people off to small claims court with boxes of evidence?
    • req2 17y ago
      Google might not actually be interested in customers who may be trying to game the system. Easily revealing the violation would give people like the author reason to try various manipulations to just barely follow TOS and keep the normal AdSense.
      • branden 17y ago
        You solve that by fixing the TOS, not jerking your customers around.
        • req2 17y ago
          TOS 1.0 Play nice, and have fun! TOS 1.1 Play nice (no links to shock sites), and have fun! TOS 1.2 Play nice (no links to shock sites, no embedded images of shock sites), and have fun! TOS 2.0 Play nice on our text only boards. Have fun! TOS 2.1 Play nice and do not try to evade the ASCII image filters. Have fun! TOS 3.0 <Insert 30 pages of legalese> Customer 3.0 "Aw, I hate when they jerk you around with 30 pages of legalese."
          • branden 17y ago
            Is that really worse than a service with a simple TOS that can be pulled for no specific reason? I'd prefer to have all the rules on the table, even if the result is a stack of legalese. At least then I know the nature of what I'm dealing with.
      • jm4 17y ago
        By that logic would it be acceptable for a government to not inform citizens of the laws which they are bound by in order to prevent them from finding loopholes? Yeah, I know we're talking about a corporation and not a government, but I just want to put this in a different perspective. Opacity is not the solution and neither is a policy of permanently banning customers at the first sign of trouble. Besides, a customer gaming the system by barely operating within the rules is still following the rules. Of course, he or she may be in complete violation of the spirit of the rules, but it's technically not a violation. It's likely a flaw in rules. I'm well aware that there are lots of people out there who are looking to take advantage of the system, but when Google goes around banning anyone who violates a rule or operates on the fringe without any kind of appeal process they're bound to catch someone who just made an honest mistake.
  • michael_dorfman 17y ago
    What's the moral imperative that Google is overlooking? To patiently explain to somebody trying to game your system exactly which behaviors tipped you off?
    • davidw 17y ago
      If you simply cut people off, no questions, no appeal, no nothing, you will cull a certain number of innocent people. I can't be certain this guy falls into that category, but it seems lame to not try and settle things amicably in cases where there is a good faith effort to comply. It's just more of their crappy customer service. Remember when axod got the axe a while back? No explanations, no appeal, no contact, no nothing. They did reinstate him, but it took them quite a while. Expanding on this a bit, I think the 'pick a link' pictured in the image above was definitely grounds for not getting his money. On the other hand, what happens if you have some kind of user generated content, and someone writes the magic words... and you have ads on the page: http://twitter.com/davidnwelton/status/2093274918 http://twitter.com/davidnwelton/status/2093274918 Edit: one "good faith effort to comply" might be this: Google says your page is in violation of their terms, and needs changing (perhaps omitting the exact details), and that earnings from it will not be paid. You have the option to accept that, fix your page, and get on with things. Something like that might go a long ways to sort out the wheat from the chaff.
      • Retric 17y ago
        Comming up with a reasonable excuse that you might not be a slimeball is not that hard. Dealing with such people is a waste of time. Tipping people off as to why you think they are a slimeball is also a bad idea. PS: Never asume everyone at a large company knows what everyone else is doing.
        • davidw 17y ago
          Yeah, I can appreciate that it's not easy, and that there are doubtless legions of slimeballs trying to screw Google and their advertisers over. But when Google screws over an innocent person, that's pretty lame too.
• req2 17y ago
  Not only that, but he even acknowledges that he did the wrong thing by failing to understand or adhere to the TOS in the first place. It's okay though, because he feels entitled to use private services. > 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. "Had prohibition been repealed before I did my rum running, no violation would have occurred."
• aristus 17y ago
  Not a lawyer, but yes, his case was predicated on that the answer was not good enough. It was a non-answer, and hypocritical to boot, given their "AdSense for Domains" offering. When using three specific words in a page can get you banned for life, basic fairness suggests that they at least tell people what the hell those words are. Legally he had no standing, but what does that mean for regular people? We can be abused at will because all corporations force us to sign contracts full of weasel words?
  • michael_dorfman 17y ago
    So he can try to game the system by avoiding the three words? The point is, he was in violation of the terms of the TOS. Google didn't like what he was doing, and cancelled his account-- which is what he agreed to when he signed up. As for your last point: um, what? Corporations force us to sign contracts? If you want to use Google's service, you play by their rules. Is that really "abuse"?
    • encoderer 17y ago
      Why is everybody so concerned about poor google having to deal with people that could "game their system" ? I don't really care one way or the other about the merits of this case. But courts and legislatures in this country have put limits on contracts. The notion of "Well, you agreed to the contract, so..." has been thrown out long ago. There is nothing legally wrong with the Google contract. But if you want to talk about what's right in a moral sense, then it's right that if you unilaterally terminate a contract, and there is financial consideration involved, you should inform the other party about the termination and include a reason for it. There are limits on contract law in this country precisely because both parties in a contract are often on unequal footing. And that's certainly the case here. Consumers are forced to consume contracts as-is that are nearly always one-sided or slanted towards the bigger party. There's no specific relief to this problem as far as I can see. But there's also no need to sit here and advocate it, either, which is what you're doing. Unless, of course, you find yourself personally benefiting from such uneven contract negotiation. In which case, more power to you, and also, you're doing nothing good for humanity.
  • 17y ago
• wvenable 17y ago
  > Am I the only one sypathetic to Google here? Google was in the right for terminating the account but they legitimately lost the first case. They did not provide evidence of why the account was terminated. Not to the author nor to the small claims court. So they lost and they deserved to lose, in my opinion. During the appeal, they finally provided that information and won. The issue isn't so much who was right or wrong but how terrible (or non-existent) Googles customer service is. They can't answer simple questions and if you've really been terminated unjustly, you have no way of knowing and they keep your money.
  • kevinpet 17y ago
    That's a good point, and makes me wonder how the law applies here. My understanding was that you can only appeal on a point of law, not to introduce additional evidence that you didn't bother to bring to the first trial.
    • wglb 17y ago
      Is the small claims process different?
  • stanleydrew 17y ago
    They don't keep your money. They return it to the advertisers who paid for their ads to show up on worthless sites.
• DenisM 17y ago
  Low court precedents are not binding.
  • anigbrowl 17y ago
    Correct, but if not appealing the decision following the publicity splash Greenspan made with his first article would have encouraged thousands more micro-suits, each of which costs Google time and money to respond to. Winning their appeal is likely to reduce the number of litigants to a trickle rather than a flood.
  • Ardit20 17y ago
    If this was the Court of Appeal, then it is binding on the lower courts. I really thought that the reason why google cared to appeal this case was because the court of claims decided that google can not terminate an account without giving the reasons for doing so. That I would assume, is quite a significant decision for google, bearing in mind the way they currently operate. If that was the case, and if I was this guy, I would take it up to the Supreme court just on that one point and nothing else.
• DenisM 17y ago
  >that his position was not tenable. He actually got his answer and got to face his accuser in court. So his position was tenable.
• lutorm 17y ago
  Well, actually, his position was tenable. He did find out why his account was disabled. He lost the case, but that sounds like it was beside the point. I find the argument that you have no right to know why the other party claims you have breached the contract because it says so in the contract highly dubious. I mean, Google might claim that you have breached the contract, but that's an accusation you have to be able to defend yourself against, either in civil court or in arbitration. Otherwise, what would stop people from just arbitrarily claiming that the other parties to all their contracts have breached their terms? The only reason Google can get away with it is beacuse they are holding the cash. And if someone who owes me money just start claiming that they no longer does so, they'd better be prepared to prove why. Anything else is a travesty.
• Ardit20 17y ago
  The rights of those accused of crimes have no bearing on the TOS, a contract he agreed to, which clearly states that his account can be cancelled for any reason I am a bit confused by the article. It starts with saying that he won against google as apparently google has no right to terminate the account without giving any reason. Once we are in the appeal court however, the whole discussion is on the reason for google terminating his account and if this was right. There is no talk whatever of whether google can terminate the account without giving any reason, which I thought and assumed this was the whole point of the appeal.