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He was a domain squatter with text directing people to click on the google ads. He's violating the TOS at the time in multiple ways, and clearly isn't providin
by modoc 17y ago
He was a domain squatter with text directing people to click on the google ads. He's violating the TOS at the time in multiple ways, and clearly isn't providing any value.
Spending time holding the hand of every pissed off squatter/spammer isn't in Google's interest.
- lucumo 17y agoIt's not that hard to display a message "Your account has been banned because ...". That's all he asked. As for squatters... AdSense for Domains is probably making Google some good money. I too wished they didn't, but they did.
- axod 17y agoIt's not too hard for people to not flagrantly violate ToS. That's all they asked. Adsense for Domains is something advertisers can opt out of.
- DenisM 17y agoEven people you don't like have rights.
- litewulf 17y agoBut every time you tell people what they do wrong they can begin to figure out how the abuse detection works. What if the threshold is at 25 domains, so instead people start opening multiple accounts that run only 24 domains. By telling people what precisely got them booted they can start varying parameters to see what the triggering mechanism is.
- ori_b 17y agoWell, you could be sufficiently vague - "Your account has been terminated for domain squatting on domain http://i-squat-here.com http://i-squat-here.com would tell him why his account had been terminated, but wouldn't reveal any sensitive information. And google's contactability for valid issues does still suck, with some exceptions.
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- litewulf 17y agoNo, the problem is really that information disclosure is very tricky. The very fact that you get the notice "you were domain squatting on X" is actually useful for exploits. Whats the line where Google considers something domain squatting? Lets say its domain squatting if you have less than 5 pages of content, simply create tons of accounts with varying levels of content. What if the signal is "has tons of domains", then run Adsense on tons of domains and see what the threshold is. (etc etc etc)
- Ardit20 17y agoThat is like saying that the government should not tell us what is illegal because we may exploit the law. The way government deals with this is by allowing courts to make law. The alternative would be what google does. Say nothing and leave no way of protecting oneself.
- TallGuyShort 17y agoAnd those rights / obligations are listed in the Terms of Service, where he was explicitly told he didn't have the "right" to an explanation. He may deserve one in our eyes, but he has no legal ground to demand it as a 'right'.
- ahoyhere 17y agoThis is the same argument made for sealed, private laws. Look, closing someone's account and taking their money for unspecified "reasons" is wrong, if not illegal. Banks can't do it. Credit card companies can't do it. Any account where you leave money... can't do it. Maybe this guy was sketchy, but here's how Google has to handle these things: * stop showing ads * close the account for all future ads * give a window of time for him to disburse the money he already earned for clicks, and if he withdraws in that time, great, otherwise, too bad for him * close the account permanently Thomas Fuchs, who wrote Script.aculo.us, had over $2k stolen by Google in this manner. As you can see, http://script.aculo.us/ http://script.aculo.us/ is clearly not domain squatting nor does it tell people to click. It's a bonafide OSS project used by hundreds of thousands of people. So why was his money seized? We'll never know, eh? Google also closed my Checkout account under similar circumstances. Namely, I did nothing wrong. The only reason I got my money back was because my blog post got such incredible traffic that it started a debate on the internal mailing list. Why was my account closed? Well gee, after I got 60,000 reads, they claimed it was a "technical glitch" -- but I know this to be a lie because a little birdie inside told me what was going on. Most other people will not be so lucky.
- Semiapies 17y agoYou say this elsewhere, but what rights of his have been violated?
- invisible 17y agoNamely, he had two other websites that had content and he had ads on that were valid uses of adsense. Whether the $761 was divided 60/40 or 10/90 is hard to say. One website should not void your terms for other (fair-use) sites.
- Semiapies 17y agoThe other websites are not separate matters, though. They're all services provided as part of an agreement that he violated. And it looks like he violated that agreement knowingly and flagrantly.
- invisible 17y agoGoogle saying that it is against their TOS doesn't make the legality of it valid. Yes, he "may" have been in the wrong for THAT site (although google did introduce a service two days later for his situation), but their conditions for refusal of service are horribly "evil." (Do they even refund the adwords users that had to pay?)
- tokenadult 17y agoGoogle saying that it is against their TOS doesn't make the legality of it valid. It's called freedom of contract, which is a bedrock principle of law in any country with a thriving economy.
- Ardit20 17y agoIs there really freedom when you sign that contract though? Freedom of contract refers to cases where both parties are able to negotiate. In this particular case this goes under unfair contractual terms, which is the way the law protects the small guy against the big guy who only has one contract and you either accept it or not. It is like a supermarket saying that we will not refund products of a very low quality. Your option is either to not buy anything in any supermarket, cus sure if it was legal they all would want to have that term in their contract, or buy and have no way of recourse.
- kragen 17y agoThe issue is that he was cheating Google by putting their ads on worthless trash sites.