

Why Google Bothered to Appeal a $761 Small Claims Case (and Won) - nhaschka
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-bothered-to-ap_b_213176.html

======
michael_dorfman
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 in the United States of America, the accused are
generally given the right to know both the crimes they are being accused of,
and the identities of their accusers, Mr. C. responded by saying that such
thinking did not apply to Google's terms of service. Effectively, Google's
position was that it was above the law, and if not any law in particular, then
at least the spirit of the law. Irked, I decided to find out if such a
position was tenable._

Well, he found out, through the appeals court, that his position was _not_
tenable. 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. His whole lawsuit was predicated on the fact that he didn't
think the reason they gave-- that his account " _posed a significant risk to
[..] AdWords advertisers_ "-- was good enough.

Now, based on this, why would Google let a lower court ruling stand? It's not
the $761, it's the precedent.

~~~
aristus
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?

~~~
timmaah
>> all corporations force us to sign contracts

Last time I checked I was free to sign whatever I like. Don't like the AdSense
contract.. don't sign it. Sell the ad space yourself.

~~~
rw
Imperfect markets. Don't trot out that tired horse that goes "you have every
choice possible, how could you complain about the one you picked?"

------
Semiapies
I dunno. This bit:

"This is what I tried to explain in my opening arguments. 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."

strikes me as his saying that he was actually quite aware _why_ Google
objected and terminated his account.

That, coupled with his arguing in court that _Gee whiz_ , he was totally
following the terms of service for a _completely different_ service that he
wasn't actually paying for just kills my sympathy for him.

Yes, Google should tell people why it terminates these accounts. On the other
hand, this guy comes across as a domain-squatting asshat.

~~~
DenisM
Asshats have rights too.

~~~
ubernostrum
Do they have the right to breach contracts?

~~~
DenisM
They have a right to be told how the contract was breached, especially when
hundreds of dollars are on the line.

~~~
brk
Where is that right spelled out or granted?

~~~
DenisM
I don't think you have a right to an answer for your question.

------
fortunado
What did Google expect of this? Did they think they would fight this guy, and
suddenly he would give up writing about this case?

I feel like they got a pyrrhic victory here.If your customer is getting his
answers in the form of evidence at a hearing, you're doing something wrong,
regardless of whether or not he was actually in violation of the terms of use.

Anyway, thanks for adding this. It's good to read how it all ended up.

~~~
axod
Google did the right thing. He comes across as a whining scammer.

~~~
krschultz
Not to me, Google comes across as muscling out a small business for their own
interest. Isn't this the definition of using a monopoly position for anti-
competitive practice? Their position is completely undermined as soon as they
introduce a product for squatting exactly like what he had made on his own.

~~~
axod
Yeah did you see the screenshot? Do you think it's a good thing to have him
defrauding advertisers like that, or a bad thing?

Tip: Don't "make a product" out of someone elses product, if it violates the
T&C.

The difference is, advertisers can choose if they wish their adverts to appear
on parked domains or not with the official product.

~~~
ptomato
Note that at the time of the original termination of his account, the terms of
use did not forbid use with parked domains and the service itself did not
provide any distinction between parked domains and regular domains.

~~~
paulgb
Last time I looked into adsense was around 2006, and I remember it being
pretty clear that sites without content were not eligible.

~~~
axod
And the text prompting people to click on the adsense is in clear breach of
the T&C.

------
anc2020
If I was Google, I would have been really annoyed too:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/rustybrick/3607264237/>

~~~
lucumo
Perhaps, but they could've warned him to remove it, or at least told him when
he asked for it after the fact.

Playing a guessing game about some decision with a company that nullified a
debt to you by said decision is a bit classless.

~~~
modoc
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.

~~~
DenisM
Even people you don't like have rights.

~~~
litewulf
But 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
Well, you could be sufficiently vague - "Your account has been terminated for
domain squatting on domain <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.

~~~
litewulf
No, 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)

~~~
lucumo
You get only one try...

~~~
litewulf
I have friends and family... (really, all you need are a few collaborators.)

------
seldo
The bigger issue for me here is that Google even has an Adsense For Domains
program. This program essentially legitimizes domain-squatting by making it
extremely profitable. If Google were to withdraw support for domain-squatting
(as it does on regular adsense) this parasitic industry would collapse
overnight, leading to a measurable increase in the quality of search results
for everyone.

Sadly, Google took the evil pill a few years ago.

~~~
blhack
Domain squatting has been around for a lot longer than google for domains has.

~~~
davidw
So have many other unsavory industries; that doesn't mean that any one company
needs to get into them.

( _Edit_ : I'm not arguing the OP's point that Google legitimizes the
industry, simply that being in it is in some ways dubious. In case it wasn't
clear.)

~~~
blhack
What?

I'm saying that google ending their adsense for domains program would not
cause the domain squatting industry to collapse.

~~~
davidw
You're right, it wouldn't. That doesn't mean they have to be in it. It's a
choice they're making.

------
mellis
To me, this case illustrates a scary fact: we entrust large amounts of our
data, visibility / reputation (in the form of search results), and revenue (ad
sense) to a company that applies no human judgement to individual cases
regardless of their importance to the affected parties. This guy may have
violated Google's ToS and have deserved to have his account terminated. But
that doesn't change the fact that Google (or one of its algorithms) could
decide to drop your website from its search results, or delete your GMail
account, or cancel your Ad Sense account and keep the balance - all with no
appeal to a human being, no opportunity to explain any extenuating
circumstances, and little recourse.

True, a person may not be a more effective reviewer in general, Google's
algorithms may make few mistakes, and we all benefit from the efficiency of a
customer service-free operation. Still, it would be nice to think that if
something bad happened, you might have a chance to correct it.

~~~
madmanslitany
I understand where you're coming from, but I think you already covered the
counterargument to this; in the aggregate, humans may not be more effective
reviewers than a purely computational system. There should always be some sort
of recourse as a failsafe, but I don't think that spending more money and time
on human customer service is a good idea for Google. I think it's something
we'll get used to; I imagine there must have been a similar sort of discomfort
when ATMs were introduced, but they're ubiquitous now.

This sort of automation is also very much in tune with Google's philosophy
(and really, the history of information retrieval itself--it's gradually
steered away towards using much human expert input in problem solving from
what I remember) and may be the only viable option for some of Google's
services given the kind of scalability they need.

------
req2
> a number of instances where I was asked to read relevant portions of the
> terms of service out loud for the judge (designed more than anything to
> humiliate since it was already readily apparent that I could read),

Doesn't understand what that court stenographer does, I see. (Also, quite
willing to impute intent where none lies.)

> Though at that point I should have asked him how often he beat his wife, I
> was too shocked to think of it.

Should be if he still beat his wife.

> Google has more access to information about people than virtually any
> company on the planet, yet despite its vast resources, it found it more
> prudent to fabricate disparaging innuendo about me before a judge. The sole
> purpose was to damage my credibility.

<Innuendo about Google> "HOW DARE GOOGLE USE WHAT I PERCEIVE TO BE INNUENDO!"

> but I'd like to think that more than being a simply typographical error, the
> judge was conceding that I had a point. There is no law explicitly stating
> so, but there was no need for Google to behave in as draconian a manner as
> it did throughout the entire process of investigating the circumstances
> surrounding my account termination.

Off the deep end, past innuendo, into the pool of magical thoughts.

> The fact that it conducts smear campaigns against small business owners

The only smear campaign I've seen is the one he's perpetrated against himself
(somewhere in the vicinity of "social media elite") and Google.

> Google (presumably, since no one else knew) even notified bloggers and/or
> The Huffington Post of the appeals court ruling

Yeah, I hate those public court records and those journalistic bloggers.
Stupid Google.

As loose with his writing as his morals, this guy. (Muphry's law fans, come
and get me.)

------
axod
It's hard to read this without hating the guy.

>> "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."

Yeah! Because they had a closed system, they forced you into violating the
terms+conditions.

What a shady character. Glad Google won this.

------
run4yourlives
When Google's lawyer handed him pages of documents 5 minutes before the case
began, why didn't he ask the Judge to defer the case until he had time to
review the new material?

Methinks he should have hired a lawyer.

EDIT: Why am I being downmodded? Anyone care to explain?

~~~
cellis
Thats where you think wrong, my friend, for Aaron Greenspan _is_ a Lawyer.

~~~
run4yourlives
I know Edward Greenspan is, but I'm not seeing anything that suggests Aaron
is.

~~~
cellis
I meant this as a joke: every thing i've ever read about him is something
litigious.

------
Goladus
"Don't be assholes"

Try not putting misleading advertising on parked domains. Talk about
hypocrisy.

------
wvenable
Ironically, I just got the following message from Google:

\--/ snip /--

Hello,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks or impressions have been
generated on your Google ads, posing a financial risk to our AdWords
advertisers. Please note that any activity that may artificially inflate an
advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings is strictly prohibited by our
program policies.

We understand that you may want more information about the activity we
detected. However, because we have a need to protect our proprietary detection
systems, we're unable to provide our publishers with any details about their
account activity, including any web pages or users that may have been
involved. Thank you for your understanding.

\--/ snip /--

We run a fairly popular site that I'm not going to mention and we have a few
AdSense banners in our forum. We aren't clicking on our own ads or doing
anything else sneaky. So what are supposed to do about this? We can't change
anything because we aren't doing anything. So next month will Google just cut
us off? Frustrating to say the least.

~~~
anigbrowl
It occurs to me that this creates an incentive for black hat hackery: you are
my competitor, so I arrange (at arm's length) to artificially inflate your
traffic, make you anathema to Google (perhaps by using gratuitous and obvious
SEO aimed at your domain), and then exploit your declining revenue/search
placement to improve my own market share.

------
zach
I used to think Google just providing horrible customer disservice by
canceling accounts without explanation, but now I at least have some insight
on the situation. Once you provide specific reasons, it invites bargaining and
hair-splitting of the worst sort.

------
sahaj
google doesn't actively go around trying to screw people over. they have
engineers that look for certain violations of terms, and it looks like his
case fell under one of those violations.

------
anigbrowl
Although somewhat sympathetic and agreeing that Google really ought to
consider having a proper customer service policy (instead of just making PhD
types do some as part of their training), I think the Mr Greenspan is a fool
for rushing into print before receiving and cashing the check.

Indeed, I find myself wondering if a similar degree of over-confidence is the
root cause of his other negative experiences. His HuffPo articles seem united
by a certain 'screwed again' theme. You would think a graduate of Harvard with
extensive experience of legal conflict would know that until the check clears
or the date passes, an appeal is always a possibility.

~~~
gojomo
Huh? If he'd waited until everything settled, he'd have only one story -- and
it'd be a less-interesting story about fighting "the man" and losing.

By reporting his initial victory, he gets two interesting stories out of his
experience. The ultimate court outcome is irrelevant; the value is the
notoriety from the experience.

~~~
anigbrowl
By that logic, google's decision to appeal the case has done him an enormous
favor, giving him double the material.

However, if you read carefully you'll see that google called him up to say
they were going to send a check, and then he went into print with his story
before they did so. If he had waited until the check cleared and _then_ wrote
'how I sued google and won', he'd have the moral victory, the publicity _and_
the money, because paying out money constitutes an acceptance of the court's
judgement and abrogates the right to appeal.

~~~
gojomo
Google has done him a massive favor, both by flubbing the initial defense and
by appealing. Just look at the plug for his new service at the bottom of his
latest story.

Even with the call, I wouldn't be certain that he was on the verge of getting
a check, if he'd just stayed silent. The paralegal may have been going through
perfunctory steps before an inevitable review-and-decision-to-appeal. (She may
have been stalling or fishing for information to assist further investigation
-- didn't Google already have his Tax ID from the AdSense program? Maybe the
Tax ID was what legal needed to pull up the AdSense enforcement history.)

The precedent was always important to Google -- they don't want every minor
AdSense rule-bender like Greenspan to sue them in small claims. And every
AdSense publisher by definition has a website, so is a potential source of
blog-blowback to be taken seriously when their tiny win inspires others.

If in fact he was just days from getting a check, there should be a parade of
other small-claims winners against Google who, after cashing their checks,
could blog freely in the glory of their irrevocable victory. (His experience
shouldn't be _that_ unique.)

Where are their blog entries?

------
dougp
The thing I don't understand is why they don't pay what they owe and then
close the account down. If Google, Paypal, etc did that there wouldn't be
nearly as much outrage.

~~~
frig
It's not even precedence per-se.

Ad networks are _abusable_ products: there's tons of ways someone could be
making use of the service in a fraudulent fashion.

You can't know someone's fraudulently using the service until they actually
_fraudulently use the service_ , at which point by design the service _will_
appear to "owe" them money; thus, anytime you're shutting someone down who's
making fraudulent use of the service you're going to appear to owe them money
right before you shut it off.

Which is why they're not going to pay this guy: as far as they're concerned he
defrauded their customers -- publishers -- out of some $700, which is how his
account got into a state where it looked to him like he was "owed" some $700;
there's not really a reason to pay him, though, for obvious reasons, which is
why they're not going to pay him.

------
TweedHeads
So, a clown tries to make a circus out of a small claim case and gets his ass
handed in a silver plate by shark lawyers?

Learn to have your mouth shut and accept your small victory, instead of trying
to stir a happy-suing-fuck-fest.

He got what he deserved.

~~~
Ardit20
and a lot of publicity, perhaps worth much more than some 700 dollars.

------
ABrandt
This is disgusting--plain and simple. Not only is this an obvious abuse of the
judicial system, but it is a valuable insight into the real attitude of Google
HQ. I'm taking my personal data elsewhere.

Its been bung, Google.

EDIT: I understand the implications for a domain-squatting precedent here, but
the tactics used by Google are still inexcusable. As a company as influential
and powerful as they are, they have an unwritten obligation to treat their
customers with respect. What the author of this post did was wrong (note: I am
not the author, blhack's reply is not directed towards me). With all of the
data Google has at its disposal, however, how difficult is it to give the man
a straight answer when he asks for it? Our society is in a constant battle
against corporate greed and the evil that it brings. The last thing we need is
Google leading the way with this despicable behavior (selling term papers?
really??).

~~~
blhack
Have you read the backstory for this?

I know the guy that did this posts here. So this is to him: I am calling you
out.

What you did was wrong. As a geek you should know this. People that squat on
domains hoping that people typo a URL and land on your page covered in ads is
a cancer on the DNS.

NOT ONLY is it a cancer on the DNS, it steals money from people who are
legitimately trying to promote their own products.

I have a little social news website that my friends and I post on. Yeah it is
tiny, yeah it is worthless, yeah it is probably a complete and total mess of
code that is wide open to any number of vulnerabilites, but you know what?
It's my baby.

I'm broke. I'll admit that. I don't make a lot of money. But ONCE, I decided
to splurge a little bit on some google ads. Yeah, it was $50, yeah it was
stupid and pointless and I'm not going to recoup it, but this is my hobby and
I think it's fun.

I cannot even imagine how absolutely blindingly infuriated (not to mention
heartbroken) I would have been if I would have found out that this small
ammount of money that I decided to "invest" in my little project had been
squandered on some asshole leeching money from people with a landing page.

Those clicks are expensive. That $700 or whatever you earned came from people
like ME.

You violated their terms of service and you deserved everything that you got
as a result of it.

I know we're supposed to be civil here, but honestly man, fuck you. What you
did was very barely (if at all) above a pyramid scheme.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
Meh. I have no sympathy. You've got no money to pay for an attractive domain
name so you think I should just give you mine and I'm a bad guy because I'm
making a few bucks waiting for a buyer who's got his shit together? Sorry, no.
Sucks to be you.

~~~
sketerpot
You fail reading comprehension forever. The complaints that you mistakenly
think you addressed are:

1\. Domain squatters who sit on slightly misspelled domain names (e.g.
ycobinator.com, gooogle.com, etc.) and hope someone will accidentally see
their ads are parasites on the DNS.

2\. This practice lowers the return on investment for people who are trying to
advertise something. Micro-advertising keeps a lot of web sites afloat and
helps make the web's economy more fluid, so that small businesses without
brand name recognition can level the playing field a little. Domain squatters
who siphon off ad money by putting ads on crappy parked domain pages that
people go to by mistake and leave immediately are unworthy leeches sucking the
blood from the internet. They harm others and contribute nothing of value.

You seem to be exclusively defending the kind of domain squatting where you
register some attractive domain name like "fishandchips.com" and leave it
fallow until someone buys it from you. That does not address anything that
blhack said.

