
Google AdSense leak? - rmujica
http://pastebin.com/qh6Tta3h
======
birken
Let's think about this logically. Google takes 32% of every adsense click [1],
so assuming an account makes $5,000/month, Google is making $2,352/month from
that account. So by banning the account, they are making $5,000 one-time, and
losing $2,352/month forever. No company is stupid enough to do that.

However, considering a site making $5,000 or $10,000/month is generating quite
a few clicks, I think it makes perfect sense for any account reaching these
thresholds to be manually reviewed to ensure they are valid sites. The quality
of Google's clicks is one of its main selling points, and by cutting out
spammy sites at the source it both improves the quality of its own program and
at the same time removes a lot of the financial incentive to run a scummy
site.

So my guess is these policies (or similar policies that involve manual reviews
of sites) make perfect sense, are not illegal in any way, and this whole
posting is as bogus as it looks.

1:
[https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en](https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en)

~~~
scottydelta
If all this just false accusation then do you care to explain why google dont
have any human interaction with their adsense publishers if the account is
banned or suspended while their employees go around licking the asses of
people using adwords as advertisers? I had my adsense account blocked for no
reason and all the appeal went in vain without any human seeing my appeal. Now
I am a major adwords advertiser for an ecommerce site and I have google
representative just a call away!! thats just taking advantage of the monopoly
they have created.

~~~
icebraining
_If all this just false accusation then do you care to explain why google dont
have any human interaction with their adsense publishers if the account is
banned or suspended while their employees go around licking the asses of
people using adwords as advertisers?_

According to the story this only started in 2009, when as far as I know they
never had any human interaction with publishers, so that doesn't sound like a
good sign of its veracity.

The most likely explanation is simply "because publishers don't pay them".

~~~
aggronn
I can't speak for 2009, but by 2012 large publishers definitely had account
managers.

~~~
guyzero
Large publishers have had account managers since 2008 and earlier. But you
have to be pretty large.

~~~
scottydelta
being a small publisher, never knew this.

------
Matt_Cutts
Everything about this post strikes me as a conspiracy-laden fake, from the
typos to wrong terminology to untrue policies to the lack of specific names of
people. I passed this pastebin to the ads side to confirm for sure, but I
would treat this as completely untrue.

Added: Yup, I'm hearing back from multiple people on the ads side that this is
pretty much untrue from start to finish.

Also notice that the "rmujica" account that submitted this item has never
submitted any other story or written any other comment on Hacker News before
today.

~~~
hosay123
I hate to break out the tinfoil, but do you have any reason to expect the Ads
team would admit to you if any of this were true?

Secondly, I'd be impressed if after the China incident, you still had access
to Ads mailing lists given that you work in Search, so it at least seems
unsurprising that your searches would reveal nothing.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
hosay123, I've worked with the people this post talks about since 2005. Even
though I'm the head of the webspam team, I'm familiar with how AdSense deals
with fraud.

For example, I often see disgruntled publishers complaining on the web, and
from time to time I've followed up on specific blog posts to get the other
side of the story. In addition, the group that manually fights webspam at
Google is a sibling organization to the group that fights adspam.

Finally, I passed these claims directly to the ads side and so far I've gotten
three (now four) different "this is fake" responses from people I trust and
have worked with in different capacities for years, including an engineer that
I worked with in search quality who later went to work in ads.

~~~
lovepeace
I agree with Matt, the pastebin wreaks of someone wanting to be another
Snowden but it's anonymous and has no documented proof to back it up. As such
it has to be dismissed.

------
ChuckMcM
It reads like some disgruntled AdSense publishers theory as to why they were
banned. Now it is true that in 2009, when the Great Recession hit, Google went
through its processes and identified places where controls were lax. And its
true that there has always been a lot of abuse of AdSense (it is after all the
first thing a neophyte ad-fraud wannabe does, which is create a page, put
AdSense ads on it, and then pay a bot-net to click on them. It almost seems
like some sort of starter project or tutorial it was so common)

I would be surprised though if anyone actually sought out to 'screw' the
legitimate advertisers. It is after all Google's bread and butter.

~~~
voicereasonish
> It is after all Google's bread and butter.

Is it? How much do Google make from the adsense publisher network vs
advertising directly on Google properties?

~~~
ariwilson
[http://investor.google.com/pdf/2014Q1_google_earnings_slides...](http://investor.google.com/pdf/2014Q1_google_earnings_slides.pdf)
(slide 3)

(revenue) $3.4B network $10.5B Google properties $1.5B other

~~~
xdleet
[http://investor.google.com/pdf/2010Q1_google_earnings_slides...](http://investor.google.com/pdf/2010Q1_google_earnings_slides.pdf)

Check out that dip in '09\. Interesting.

------
DrJosiah
If you are going to sit around and "see what happens" for 3 years, you talk to
a lawyer. You gather evidence. Emails, text chats, etc. You audio record
meetings and conversations with people (subject to lawyer advice). You collect
enough information over a long enough period of time so that an investigator
can trivially search a dumped archive of email to verify your claims.

But we are supposed to believe someone who offers effectively no evidence from
the duration of their claimed tenure, and who pushes it off as "I stayed
because I had a family to support, and secondly I wanted to see how far they
would go." and identity protection at the level of "such as waiting for the
appropriate employee turn around"

So... no Hardy Boys level of investigation was performed, no evidence was
gathered, no voices were recorded, no text messages were saved, no emails were
forwarded, not a single byte was smuggled out on a flash drive nestled in the
poster's pocket. Nothing was done to offer even the slightest bit of recording
of anything.

The poster is either the most pathetic excuse for a whistle blower that I've
ever heard, or it's a poor-quality April fool's joke that is 28 days too late.

~~~
7952
There is obviously no proof one way or the other, questioning the veracity of
the source does not change that. My guess is that new evidence will emerge
sooner or later. A graph of cancellation dates would be an interesting start.

~~~
DrJosiah
In cases of whistle blowing, which this is purporting to be, evidence is one
of the most important things that you can gather and report on. Yet we have
literally none from the OP.

What we have instead is a compelling story written anonymously, but for which
there is no supporting evidence provided. Extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence, yet there is none.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7668230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7668230)
brings up the most important point to this entire thread, which is that the
premise under which the OP claims that Google steals money from people through
cancellation falls on its face when you look at the economics of a
cancellation. It's just not economically viable for Google to do that - it's
like eating your leg because you're hungry. And of all the things that Google
is, it's not stupid.

------
adsenseclient
As a large publisher, we have witnessed both the $10,000 and $5,000
thresholds. It's simply true. We are now using other networks and directly
working with advertisers, and our AdSense revenue is $4,500 (total ad revenue
is $25,000+/mo). We also quite presciently considered making a PR stink after
the first AdSense ban (we were re-instated later), but decided this could
tarnish the image of our company and of our product for our clients- AdSense
revenue was not important enough.

Even though after the initial ban (when we overshot $10,000/mo) we were OK'ed
by a contact in their Policy Team and re-instated (a contact we found after a
lot of work), EVERY time when we bounced back to $10,000 and then to $5,000
after scaling down, we would have new vague and inane threats from AdSense
about our perfectly NORMAL UGC ,as if the initial conversation with their
Policy has never taken place.

We basically migrated away from AdSense, but if their are ANY SERIOUS LAWYERS
here interested in a class action, we have a WEALTH of DETAILED documentation.
ANAL, but it's definitely interesting: we have never encountered such a SHITTY
treatment by any other company, and we have about 1,500 corporate clients.
Once again, we never did anything shady or different than some other
publishers that are apparently Green-listed by Google.

~~~
fireworks10
Had an Adsense account banned in January with $15k credit taken days before
payout date (After 8 months of $2k-$12k earnings history per month) and
extremely low RPM&CTR. No answer to appeals, no explanation other than the
vague phrase 'for policy violations'. :/

~~~
driverdan
Did you sue them for your money? If not, why not?

------
ewillbefull
Funny; back in 2010 this exact thing happened to a company I worked at. The
day before payout (for the _previous month_ ) our AdSense account was banned.
So we lost 2 months worth of ad revenue. They completely ignored all of our
emails and we had to move to another ad provider immediately.

~~~
camus2
that happened to me , now i dont know if there is a wide scale scam or it was
just a "bug" but they banned me for no reason and of course no way to
appeal.And they owed me quite a lot.I moved to some other ad service,it pays
less but i still get my money.

~~~
ensignavenger
One way to appeal- file a lawsuit. :)

~~~
camus2
While the money they owed me was significant it would have been difficult(and
expensive) to sue google at that time. It would be very different today.I had
to write it off.And they had the audacity to send me a 50$ voucher for adsense
just after that...

~~~
ensignavenger
That is certainly a challenge. It really irks me when there is such a power
imbalance and people take advantage of it. When I have to use the courts, I
generally use small claims court and represent myself when I can, and I've had
good luck with that, even though the time and cost for legal filings is not
insignificant. The amount they owed you was likely more than the max in your
state for small claims, though.

------
fixermark
"The new policy was officially called AdSense Quality Control Color Codes
(commonly called AQ3C by employees)."

You know, you'd think that if Google had a 2-years-running official policy,
some other bit of leakage about it would have occurred by now. Two years is a
long time for an official policy on a giant company's largest product to have
never even been whispered, in accident, on the Internet before.

Let me do a quick search...
[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22adsense+quality+control+c...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22adsense+quality+control+color+codes%22)

Nope. Just three instances of Pastebin (Hm, wonder why three?).

Oh, I know what I did wrong. I'm using the wrong search engine!

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22adsense+quality+control+colo...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22adsense+quality+control+color+codes%22)

Hm, nope, only one result there too.

Curious.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
There you go bringing reason to a conspiracy discussion. :) For what it's
worth, I immediately searched for "aq3c" within Google and within my email--no
matches found there either. In my estimation, this post is absolutely fake.

~~~
robin69
In whole explaination it seems like you ae defending Google. :). and why will
anyone comeup with his original identity. The Leaker:P is also smart guy SIR.
:)

~~~
nevi-me
Who else should defend his employer? Someone external who doesn't have any
resources to follow?

------
tmarman
This doesn't surprise me at all.

My account was banned for "invalid activity" in the timeframe mentioned. The
automated emails said they wouldn't even tell me what I supposedly did wrong.
I tried appealing and only got an automated email telling me my appeal was
denied. I was never able to talk to anyone or get any actual details on
wrongdoing. A quick search and you'll quickly realize this happened to a lot
of people.

I had something like $200 sitting in my account, which was obviously
forfeited. Before this even happened, I removed ads from my blog (which is
where the revenue was earned) because it wasn't performing well enough to
justify having ads there anyway.

In the end, I didn't really care so much about my forfeited balance - hell, I
even volunteered to forfeit it during the appeal if it was in any way
associated with invalid activity among other things. The big issue is that
this seems to be a lifetime/universal ban. BEFORE WE EVER RAN ADS, an AdSense
account with an unrelated corporate tax ID was also banned for "Invalid
Activity". The only reason I can conceivably come up with on the ban is that
this was also associated with a Google Apps account that I have.

I'm a longtime Google shareholder and supporter, but it's times like this when
you realize you can't trust "Don't Be Evil" any more. Ironically, I've spent
way more in Google Apps + AdWords than I ever earned with AdSense.

------
oh_sigh
If this is such a slam dunk, why not just go directly to the FBI or IRS? I'm
sure there are tons of people in those orgs who would LOVE to smash google if
they really were behaving in such an illegal manner.

It seems a bit more realistic than hoping that they see this pastebin text,
and decide to follow up on it, track you down, and get your statements on the
record.

~~~
mstade
Reaching out to the authorities may take much longer or even be ignored, and
causing a PR stink may be a much more effective approach. As an example, the
SEC was contacted with regards to Bernard Madoff likely running a ponzy scheme
as early as 1999, yet went largely ignored for a decade.

Just because you contact authorities doesn't necessarily mean they believe you
or even care, regardless of how much actual evidence you have (of which the OP
has presented _none_ , by the way.) Causing a PR stink raises the profile of
the issue, and could be a much more effective approach to getting the
authorities attention.

That said, I don't believe OP's story for a second, for many of the same
reasons other have cited. If this was a true case of whistle blowing, there
would be tangible evidence but the OP has presented none.

------
adventureartist
As a developer, I have had, and friends have had thier Adsense accounts banned
right before payout for legitimate earnings. It hurts so bad to have that
happen, and Google gives you little recourse. I cannot speak to the legitimacy
of this pastebin, but reading it, it sounds completely plausible. If it walks
like a duck...

------
cliveowen
Making this kind of statements and then not providing any kind of proof is
just pointless. No one has any reason to believe any of this and this can't
therefore be considered a leak because it carries absolutely no value.

------
tty
The link went from being #3 on the frontpage to below #20 in a matter of
minutes.

~~~
sscalia
How dare anyone on HN attack Google.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
It's a fake. It's an anonymous post on pastebin, submitted by a one-time
account. The terminology is wrong. The policies are wrong. The post is full of
typos. The post has almost no specifics, and the one specific thing they
mentioned ("AQ3C") isn't real.

If this story isn't getting traction, then HN is doing the right thing here.

~~~
ltorresv
I do see a decent number of people posting they've had issues with
cancellations that match what the pastebin describes.

Why aren't you replying to any of them if you're acting as the voice of reason
here?

~~~
whatevsbro
> Why aren't you replying to any of them if you're acting as the voice of
> reason here?

Exactly because the fraudulent bans are actually a widespread phenomenon, but
that goes against what Matt's been telling us here.

------
perlgeek
I somehow doubt this is true, but Google has done its fair share to give rise
to such rumours.

Mostly they have been very opaque on the reasons of account bans, they haven't
payed out the remaining balances of banned accounts (even when they presented
no proof of any fraud), and finally they haven't provided a working way to
appeal any bans.

I can understand their decisions, but they do come with the risk of bad PR.

------
benlarcey
Whilst I've never used adSense much, this does corroborate with chatter in
SEO/webmaster forums, especially around 2012.

The paragraph on G analytics is also very interesting, it never seems to line
up with other tracking tools like Piwik.

~~~
at-fates-hands
This is one the thing that I found curious as well.

I worked at a company who used WebTrends. Some of the their customers
installed Google Analytics alongside Webtrends and then would complain that
the numbers didn't match up between the two. Sometimes it wasn't close (+/\-
10%) other times it was closer, but there was always a discrepancy between the
two. Of course it looked since we used WebTrends, we were inflating the
numbers, when in reality, it was the exact opposite.

When I read this part of the post, I could totally see them tweaking the GA
numbers so they were lower.

~~~
hagbardgroup
The reason for this would be that GA filters out bot traffic differently than
other vendors. That includes legitimate bots like search engine crawlers. Web
analytics are just not that accurate. The number quoted by the Xoogler in an
analytics manual I recently went though is an expectation of ~10%+ wiggle.

GA is always going to show 'lower' numbers than straight logs in particular
because of this.

------
hanley
I found this part interesting. So the only way to even find out the reason for
your account being banned is to hire a lawyer.

> A reason has to be internally attached to the account ban. The problem was
> that notifying the publisher for the reason is not a requirement, even if
> the publisher asks. The exception: The exact reason must be provided if a
> legal representative contacts Google on behalf of the account holder.

------
ribena59p
I am an adsense publisher, never experienced a ban before, however I did get
my account deactivated once for a violation.

It was like extracting teeth, they would not tell me what it was! It took me 5
days to notice that in an area of my site if hovered over with the mouse an ad
would be fractionally covered at the corner (I know, so evil).

I addressed the issue and emailed them back to ask if that was the issue
sorted now, they thanked me and said it was now sorted, and sent me
screenshots of the problem from the past.

Google, we are not little stringed puppets, realistically all they had to do
was tell me what the problem was (with screenshots they had), and it would've
been fixed in under 5 minutes.

No, Google apparently doesn't work like the other 99.9% of the population. Are
the workers all just sitting around on some massive ego trip? Wondering when
daddy is going to bring in a candy floss machine.

Put it this way, if Google were seen as a good company these stories would get
no attention at all, I think secretly deep down we all think your eViL and we
honestly wouldn't put it past you to do something like this.

------
tomp
Hm... something does not compute:

> Having signed many documents such as NDA's and non-competes, there are many
> repercussions for me, especially in the form of legal retribution from
> Google.

> No one on the outside knows it, if they did, the FBI and possibly IRS would
> immediately launch an investigation, because what they are doing is so
> inherently illegal and they are flying completely under the radar.

Wait, what legal repercussions? If what they're doing is illegal, (1) they
probably wouldn't win the lawsuit against you, and (2) more importantly, NDAs
don't apply (IANAL, but AFAIK contracts are overruled by law), and he could
and should report the crime directly to the police.

Unless, of course, s/he has too much to loose from bullying, or if s/he fears
Google bought politicians.

~~~
MertsA
That's correct, an NDA is completely irrelevant in terms of keeping someone
from disclosing a crime.

------
6thSigma
The risk/reward here doesn't add up. Taking an extra few thousand a month from
publishers isn't worth risking the billions in revenue they make per year.

------
__xtrimsky
I got banned from Google Adsense as a teenager (7 years ago). Still regret my
stupid decision to try and hack Google Adsense clicks. My account was never
restored :(.

~~~
soaringabove
Most murderers get out in a few years. Google has no sense of due process
whatsoever. You should be allowed back in after a while -- especially if you
were very young.

------
halayli
This is aligned with what I've heard from people working in Adsense
department.

------
baby
Happened to someone I know back in 2005 I think, he lost 2 months of payment,
and it was a lot of money. But he had some erotic videos on his website so...
mostly his fault.

------
Donzo
Why would they take all of your earnings for one month instead of 1/3rd to
infinity?

That's just dumb.

That said, I have noticed AdSense policy enforcement ratcheted up, but
protecting the advertisers is in everybody's best long term interests.

My experience with AdSense policy enforcers was fair.

I preferred having ad units that encouraged unintentional clicking, I made
more money like that, but I understand why they made me change it.

Having made my ads less blended to the site, I have had no issues since.

------
jacquesm
reocities.com got banned for no reason that I can think of, never bothered to
try to engage google on this because it is as good as pointless. Google just
simply doesn't care, as long as more people are signing up than they are
cancelling they can keep the ship afloat. On the off-chance that you're trying
to social engineer them they apparently can't take the risk to re-enable an
account.

So, I've taken the attitude that google adsense is to be avoided like the
plague for anything approaching a business. It's found money if you can get
it, and if you can't that shouldn't be a factor in your business plan at all.

------
jgalt212
Regardless of whether this is true or not, I'd say it's a good rule of thumb
when dealing with a Monolith (Google) to expect better treatment when paying
them money (AdWords) than when they pay you money (AdSense).

------
grimmfang
The whole click bombing argument is undoubtedly true, I've seen it happen too
many times. Additionally, from my experience, Google will wait until
immediately before the payout period to ban. I had $750 waiting to be paid out
one month then poof! Three days before the payout my account was banned.

I don't know if this guy is telling the truth, but his arguments have truth in
them.

------
scott_karana
If it's an anonymous leak, exposing overt fraud, why would the poster not name
names, unless this leak was a fake?

> "...fuck the rest" (those words were actually said by a Google AdSense exec)

> there was a "sit-down" from the AdSense division higher ups to talk about
> new emerging issues

------
phaser
I had my AdSense account and site blocked just before i got to the $5000/month
mark.

I followed every consideration in the official AdSense blog, ensured that
every content policy was met. Appealed with a strong case and got revoked.

No official explanation was given even by Google employees I contacted.

I see tons of sites with shit content and link building monetize with adsense
while ours is loved by 1,000,000 users who spend 12 minutes average and a
bounce rate below 6%.

Everything on the leak makes total sense to me and we spent so many days
implementing stuff to get Google's approval (like image fingerprinting, spam
database, porn detection, overseas moderators) to get a shitty robot response
with no real explanation.

------
Greenisus
I'm inclined to believe this, but I'm skeptical of Google Analytics numbers
being deflated. Wouldn't people notice the data not being consistent with
other tools or their own web server logs?

~~~
justanotherlurk
It's funny you mentioned this. I was researching Piwiks as an analytics tool
today. In a few of the articles, they gave reason to use Piwiks because it
shows more traffic than Google Analytics does, with graphs to demonstrate.
These were articles from over the past few years. DDG or google search "piwiks
analytics better than" and you'll likely see the same articles.

I've also seen on many SEO forums that people have complained about the same
things in regards to getting banned days before their payout.

Most website advertiser types are the kind of people who are recalcitrant to
file a lawsuit. I know I am myself. So really, it's a good business decision
in this regard.

I can't accuse Google of anything though. On the other hand, automating
account bans past a certain earning threshold unless they're high profile
people seems easy to implement, with a massive earning when done on the multi-
billion-dollar [0] ad revenue scale that Google oversees.

[0] [http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/google-finally-
crosses...](http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/google-finally-
crosses-50-billion-annual-revenue-mark-146710)

~~~
fastolfe
"... automating account bans past a certain earning threshold ... seems easy
to implement, with a massive earning"

More earnings than not banning them and letting them continue to make money
for Google?

------
jacky04
Though the adsense is best possible option for monetizing, it seems that they
have some UNANSWERED question raising every time.

I am an old adsense publisher and serving adsense ads on my sites since last
three years but it is becoming a bit difficult to cope with their Terms and
services.

They have disabled ad serving on my few real MONEY MAKING sites only because
my site was having one Google trademarked WORD in URL. ( I don't know how do
they understand this as violation of TOS after three years of ad serving.)

If we look in to this policy of adsense which says do not use Google
trademarked WORD in URL then almost all possible site that is dedicated to
TECH news is violating this rule because they all writes news about Google,
Youtube, Adsense, Gmail, Google Drive, Blogspot etc and all of them are
registered trademarks of Google. These tech news sites DO HAVE GOOGLE RELATED
WORDS IN THERE URL and violating this rule.

Google does not disables such huge site only because they are so called
AUTHORITIES????

This thing is really getting suspicious.

------
programminggeek
I did enough ad buying from AdWords and dealt with the changeover to "Quality
Score" to know that Google cares a lot about raising their ad rates, but not
having the perception of doing so.

The same goes with things relating to SEO and since AdSense sits at the
intersection between SEO and AdWords, it is not at all surprising that some
managers at Google would use the guise of "quality" to juice their numbers.

I don't know if it's true or not, but the story certainly lines up with my
experiences with Google over the years unfortunately.

They deal with a lot of spammers and scammers, which is a legitimately
difficult job, but they also are a giant megacorp out to make a buck, and that
doesn't always mean they do the right thing.

Mostly I bet this gets swept under the rug and isn't investigated, which is a
shame.

------
rodmix
As a security researcher I can confirm the existence of bullet-proof AdSense
accounts mentioned in the leak.

There are some big accounts which can break TOS not being banned.

For example, localmoxie.com, a high traffic[1] malware[2] site uses AdSence
[3].

1:
[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/localmoxie.com](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/localmoxie.com)

2:
[https://www.google.com/search?num=100&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&safe...](https://www.google.com/search?num=100&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&safe=off&filter=0&q=localmoxie.com)

3\. Jan 2014 [http://archive.today/jsfNy](http://archive.today/jsfNy) Apr 2014
[http://archive.today/AkpoO](http://archive.today/AkpoO)

------
robk
Former Adsense PM here. It sounds implausible but there were certainly lots of
shady accounts from emerging markets. I could see them ratcheting up
enforcement on questionable sites from those markets surely but not at this
level of randomness cited here.

------
semmem1
Is someone shorting Google Stock to make some cash?

------
jongraehl
Plausible sci-fi.

The scheme described would have leaked immediately. Too obvious and too many
people.

~~~
mmahemoff
Wouldn't that make it _not_ plausible?

------
rikacomet
"Don't be evil"

It is a beautiful peace of rhetoric. Yet I wonder, about its
effectiveness/achievement inside Google in last 5 years since its inception.

Perhaps its because, don't be evil translates to, a middle ground always. Its
almost like trying to keep your company on 0-loss/0-profit. That is not a
great place to be, because you fall from grace easily.

"Be more good than evil" anyone?

------
deftnerd
This makes me think of the HN link yesterday about identifying businesses that
are doomed to fail because the only way they can sustain themselves is moving
into new markets. If Google keeps on banning publishers from hosting AdSense
ads in order to keep the AdSense money, that's the same dangerous behavior
that's indicative of an unsustainable business. The question becomes can they
sustain the growth and movement? Are there enough new publishers for Google to
sign up to replace the ones they arbitrarily ban or will they eventually start
having a hard time finding publishers and web properties?

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f00_
People should really stop using pastebin to post leaks, I'm pretty sure
there's still a timing-based SQL injection to get at least the user's IP

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jpswade
There's no name given of anyone involved, so nobody can be held accountable
for this whether it's true or not.

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killertypo
I have no reason to not believe this, but I also have no reason to believe
this.

It does not sound too far fetched though.

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mtnboy
I know the mass ban affected a lot of my friends in 2012, and they all had
legitimate websites.

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superunion
what about this part
[http://pastebin.com/cGGV3kpE](http://pastebin.com/cGGV3kpE)

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callesgg
Holy shit, if this is true....

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xtraclass
Is this real?

~~~
bitJericho
It would be completely unsurprising.

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praeivis
GOOG around 520 for day of the leak:
[http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GOOG+Interactive#symbol=G...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GOOG+Interactive#symbol=GOOG;range=1m)

Lets wait how market will react.

~~~
abritishguy
Nothing will happen because of some unsubstantiated pastebin.

