
Why I Sued Google (and Won) - thinkcomp
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-google-and-won_b_172403.html
======
blhack
Ummmm...it sounds like the guy totally violated google's terms of service. He
was hosting ads on a domain-squatting site that had no content. The
advertisers were refunded their money, and the guy's account was closed down.

As somebody that buys ads from google, I would be pretty pissed off if I found
out that i was paying $1 a click for my ads to be on a parked domain...which
is why they have their terms set up the way they are.

Yeah, it sounds like the appeals process sucks, and that they didn't give him
a real reason, but "you are a leeching douche-bag cancer to the DNS" should be
a pretty good hint.

~~~
jayp
Looks like Googe send in a pretty useless paralegal to defend their case.
Instead, if they had send you (or someone with the same arguments as you),
they'd have probably won.

I think it is fairly obvious what this guy did wrong. I am just surprised
Google's paralegal was not apt enough to figure this out.

~~~
tdavis
The argument wasn't that he hadn't done anything wrong, it was that he was not
informed what he had done wrong. He admitted to violating the ToS.

~~~
jayp
AFAIK, to win a small claims court, you still have to prove that you deserve
the money. I see nowhere in the story he admits to the judge that he violated
to ToS. He simply used the lack of customer service at Google/AdSense to win
this case. As I mentioned it is amazing that Google sent an unprepared para-
legal to defend themselves.

~~~
shimon
On the contrary, it would have been amazing if Google had sent a highly
trained lawyer to deal with this. The amount in question, about $760, is
probably less than a day's wages+benefits for a Google lawyer.

If you want to optimize for justice, there are plenty of failures in Google
and Google's ad programs. They seem to be pretty clear about their intention
of optimizing for profit, though.

~~~
jimbokun
Do small claims have any bearing on legal precedent? Could someone site the
legal reasoning in this case to also sue Google for their small claims, or
even higher amounts?

~~~
3pt14159
No, (at least in Canada) they do not. Small claims is not judged by a "real"
judge and those courts do not have the ability to set precedent. Same with
most traffic courts. Of course you can always bring up the judgment in another
small claims court, just won't be taken as rule of law.

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tlrobinson
This is the same guy who claims Facebook was his idea, and tried to get
Facebook's trademark revoked:

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/17/greenspan_harvard_fa...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/17/greenspan_harvard_faceboog_trademark_battle/)

~~~
thinkcomp
Tom,

I don't think we've ever met, and I'm not sure what I ever did to you to merit
repeated disdainful (and in this case, misleading) jabs in public forums, but
I actually think 280 North is really cool and I look forward to seeing where
Atlas goes.

In the meantime, my so-called claims (which are narrow and do not include the
wild notion that I "invented social networking," but do involve execution and
not merely an "idea") were verified by The New York Times and are publicly
available for inspection, so they're really facts. The trademark dispute is in
the middle of discovery right now, and ironically, there are posts on this
thread that support my case--so "tried" wouldn't be the best word to use,
either.

Anyway, if you want to selectively link to only articles that call me names,
that's your prerogative.

Aaron

~~~
ajkirwin
Dear Aaron,

You seem to be someone who enjoys ligitating, so in an effort not to get MY
ass sued, I will take a leaf out of the book of Penn Jilette.

You, sir, are a fucker, a shit-stain and a crotch weasel. You're an asshole, a
jerk and I probably wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.

Fuck you and the boat you sailed in on.

~~~
swombat
You might be willing to say this to his face (thus not contravening the HN
guidelines), but it's still not the right mode of speech on this forum.

~~~
ajkirwin
Maybe so, but I fully expect the next thing to hear about will be him suing
Twitter for shutting down his viagra spam empire.

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jcapote
Great article; I had no idea that you could just go up against whoever without
some crazy legal team in small claims court...

~~~
jimbokun
Is there a possible startup business that helps people go to small claims
court and win? A "How to" FAQ of course is useful, but I wonder if there is
way to get a business model behind it.

~~~
nostrademons
Google is pretty good at it:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=small+claims+court>

Heck, they've even got a business model around it: look at how many Adwords
results there are!

~~~
jimbokun
And the top placed AdSense ad is giving a go of it, too, I see. :)

<http://www.civiltree.com>

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tertius
I'm all for fairness but this guy was technically at fault and the paralegal
should really have known the ins and outs better than he/she did.

Another point, I don't want to send any extra traffic to the huffpost by
"liking" this article.

~~~
greyman
Google was also at fault, because they had to provide a reason for disabling
his account. I think it was correct to sue them at least for discouraging such
a practice in the future. He was their customer, it is too much to ask for at
least a one sentence response from human?

~~~
trevelyan
He should have put some content up on the domain before putting the
advertisements up. If you have this sort of traffic, why not monetize it
properly in a way that doesn't violate the terms of service?

Expecting Google to be as responsive as his own business simply because he is
the boss is unrealistic. Nice to see Google giving some young legal interns
experience this way. They probably save considerably over having more
experienced counsel handle it.

~~~
kailashbadu
Your claim that putting AdSense on a domain without first publishing some
content is against the Google TOS is unsubstantiated. In fact, Google actually
advocates publisher to monetize their unused domains with the Adsense for
Domains program.

<http://www.google.com/domainpark/>

Even if the step was against the TOS, Google should have communicated it
clearly and set the record straight. The author doesn’t begrudge that Google
disabled his account, rather that Google didn’t inform him the reason for
disabling.

~~~
redrobot5050
And I just want to chime in here and state that I'd be miffed if I had a
domain up, generating clicks for Google (in the story the author claims there
was no click fraud, and i choose to believe him) and they shut down your
account, without reason, and refund money.

Then, two days later, the TOS violation he did is okay, but through another
program.

The crux of this, is that the clicks he sent to advertisers (and the eyeballs)
were real. If I'm selling a product, I don't care if my customers find me from
search results or a squatted domain. All I care about is closing the sale and
increasing my business.

But that's just my $0.2

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coolestuk
I've never used the small claims court to sue large companies. But in genuine
disputes my partner and I have used it to sue small businesses where we have
been aggrieved. In every single case we've won, even when the disputes were
against lawyers for their fees. I know so many people who have been badly
treated (e.g. landlords keeping entire deposits claiming because some minor
damage happened during their tenancy). Yet none of my friends ever carry
through and seek legal justice. I just don't understand their fear of the very
simple small claims procedure.

~~~
shimon
I know it varies by state, but where I live (MA) the small claims limit is
$2000. When you take into consideration the amount of time you're sinking into
the case, and the risk that you might not win, there is only a small range of
damages that are likely worth pursuing in small claims court. If you're in a
line of work where you routinely sign contracts, you probably have clearer-cut
cases than the average landlord-tenant situation. I think most people hardly
understand most contracts they sign, and doubt they understand the range of
options offered by the legal system.

So two things would help: raising the small-claims limit (I think $8k or so
would make sense) and educating people about the option. Follow-up question:
do shows like People's Court serve or hinder the mission of educating people
about small claims court?

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iamelgringo
As much as I like Google, their customer service sucks when you're trying to
get in touch with someone. What other customer facing company could get away
with something like that? If it was a bank, I'd be speaking to customer
service managers. If it was a store, I'd be able to speak with a manager and
try to get the issue resolved, or at least be told why my account was
canceled.

Whether or not he violated his terms of service or not, doesn't mean that they
had a right to swallow his $700.

------
frig
There's a problem with being litigious: it closes doors for you, and you'll
probably never even know what doors they were...if someone does their due
diligence, sees you're litigious, and decides not to contact you, it's quite
unlikely they'll contact you to let you know they decided not to contact you.

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dejb
This sort of thing will be the downfall of google. The lack of communication
with smaller (1-10K/mth) business partners is a big problem. When you do a
certain level of business with them you'd expect to be able to talk to
somebody on the phone much less get a response to an email. Communication is
worth at least 10c CPM.

------
gsmaverick
The Google Adsense TOS clearly states they can terminate accounts for any
reason. And yes that includes having brown hair. You have no right to any of
the money. They DON'T owe you ANYTHING! I don't understand why people can't
realize this!

~~~
lutorm
You can't disable constitutional rights by TOS.

~~~
mhb
And that will matter when Google becomes part of the US government.

~~~
mlinsey
lutorm should have said "federal and state non-discrimination laws", not
"constitutional rights", but the result is the same.

This is the same reason private business in the South are no longer allowed to
be Whites-only.

~~~
kragen
I do not know of any federal or state US laws against discriminating by hair
color.

~~~
mlinsey
I don't know of any that explicitly mention hair color, but there are broader
laws where hair color would probably fit in. For example, Title VII of the
Civil Rights act prohibits discrimination on traits "associated" with certain
racial or ethnic groups.

~~~
kragen
Oh, true. Thanks!

------
nostrademons
How much more money could he have made had he put all the time he spent
complaining about Google, suing them, and then writing about it into improving
his product? Or coming up with something that's at least not totally lame?

At decent programmer salaries, $761 is like 2 days of work. Probably more if
you're self employed and have a decent business. There's a reason why startups
do their best not to get involved in lawsuits...

~~~
kailashbadu
You horribly misread the article if you think he did this to get his $761
back.

~~~
dbul
Agreed. You don't take Google to small claims court to win $761, you take them
to small claims court and win so that you can write about it in the Huffington
Post and have a bunch of nerds react to it.

------
Fuca
I am not saying Google its a bad company, but certainly its not the white
knight everybody believes.

~~~
blhack
are you kidding?

They're protecting the people that buy ads from them, people like _me_ ,
people with no advertising budget that are just trying to get a few people to
check out their stupid blog (<http://www.gibsonandlily.com>).

Those ads cost something like $1 a click (or more). If I found out that my
tiny tiny budget was going to ads on some stupid domain parking website, I
would be LIVID. Yeah, google terminated his account. They did it to protect
people like me, and they are the reason the reason that people like me use
them.

I'm sorry, but domain parking/squatting/tasting/leeching/whatever-you-want-to-
call-it is an instant failure in my book.

~~~
fallentimes
While I agree with most of your sentiments, I think Google could have at least
provided an explanation.

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shimi
I don't care who the guy is. A contract termination needs to come with a
reason, a termination without reason is bullying. 700$ is enough money to make
an effort and go to court to settle the sidpute.

What I find it hard to believe is that Google couldn't come up with a reason,
I just can't believe they are so incompetent!! Something just doesn't add
up...

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kragen
Can someone explain to me how domain squatters add more value to the world
than beggars? (Leaving aside that beggars usually have an excuse for not being
able to find productive work.)

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sutro
Hey thinkcomp, are you going to sue E*Trade too?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=504950>

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jfornear
I had my Google AdSense account terminated a few years ago, too. I emailed
Google asking why and never heard anything back. I remember being frustrated
about it since I wasn't doing anything that would have been considered
sketchy. I should've sued and become internet famous... ugh.

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TweedHeads
Propaganda attack on google.

Everybody sue them! We can't compete with them in terms of innovation and
services so we better sue them into oblivion by proxy.

Nice try...

