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Lengthy previous discussion on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667976 Including Matt Cutts' response to

• kyrra 12y ago
  Thanks for the links. I was uncertain the context for this HN post. Also, Matt's reply is really helpful.
  • josefresco 12y ago
    Matt's reply (or denial) is useless to this conversation. I have a great deal of respect for Matt and his contributions to the SEO community but he's quite possibly the last person I would expect to confirm, or even give credence to a claim like this given his connection to Google. Asking the ad department if they've been stealing money from thousands of publishers over the last several years? Of course they're going to deny, no matter the truth as confirming would essentially be an admission a very serious crime.
    • personZ 12y ago
      By this measure, the comment of every single person who says that they were cut off innocently is just as useless to this conversation. Are people going to admit that they thought they could click ads on their site endlessly through Tor proxies? confirming would essentially be an admission a very serious crime. Serious crime? It is actually a problem (there needs to be more competition in this space), but Google can tell any publisher to stuff it at any time. They don't need to have a reason. Now generally that doesn't make sense if they're making money on the relationship, but we know that in many cases they aren't -- that a lot of shady sites undermine the trust advertisers have in the platform.