
Don’t Be Evil: How Google Screwed a Startup - mikeknoop
http://blog.hatchlings.com/post/20171171127/dont-be-evil-how-google-screwed-a-startup
======
ambiate
I lost my Adsense account two years ago, due to valid violations. This
saddened me, and was the end of web development for me. The stats were my
heroine.

Fast forward to Spring break of this year, I developed a few Android apps and
one took off. I signed up for AdMob in early March.

I kept clean and got my fill of daily stats and was once again happy with my
new home on the internet.

Fast forward a week and a half, I get an alert saying Admob accounts will be
merged with Adsense, uh oh. I was generating decent income at this point,
because let's face it, the Android market is just wide open.

I decided to make my second appeal to Adsense, 2 years later, asking for
another chance and explaining my understanding of the previous violations. I
noted my clean record on Admob and my apps as my reason for appealing.

6 hours later, my AdMob account is banned without any kind of notification. My
wife looks over at me and wonders why I'm so sad at the laptop after 10 hours
of class. It had become my daily habit to kiss my wife and check the AdMob
stats. It's not actually about making money, it is something about watching
the growth/lotto.

So, I have now given up on Android apps and just disabled all but the most
popular one. I removed ads and cleaned up my last push.

I wish there was some type of leniency. My wife offered to make an account in
her name and just take over my Android apps, but the initial thrill is gone.
There is a looming realization of Google controlling the majority of online
advertising and that one mistake will probably haunt me for many
years/services to come.

~~~
vaksel
I had a similar thing happen to me...to a point.

It was with adwords...it was back when I was just getting started and I did
affiliate marketing. I promoted this weight loss clickbank book...it didn't
pan out, so I paused the ads.

My mistake...TWO YEARS later, I get a notice that they've shut down the
account with bots because apparently that type of advertising is no longer
allowed. So my old approval got tossed...and my account got perma banned over
something that happened 2 years prior.

I filed an appeal, and that got ignored.

So I just said screw it, and created a new account. If Google won't play by
its own damn rules, and will apply rules retroactively, I don't see why anyone
should follow the rule about no duplicate accounts.

So I just signed up for adwords with a po box and did everything via VPN to
avoid getting banned for duplicate account(matched via ip address). And it
worked just fine.

That's the thing, all this bullshit that Google does...only hurts legitimate
publishers.

The black hatters(who these rules are actually supposed to be for) only get a
slight slap on the wrist...since all they have to do is just pay $5 to get a
legitimate approved Adsense/Adwords account. Then just continue doing whatever
they were doing before.

~~~
powertower
So how do you tie in the account to a credit card or bank account?

Won't google detect the same name on the CC or bank account?

~~~
mistercow
Names aren't exactly unique.

~~~
rorrr
Tax IDs and SSN numbers are.

~~~
barrkel
AFAIK SSNs are not unique (1:1 in either respect) in the US.

<http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/5969>

------
pg
When things are this broken, it's an opportunity. Maybe it's time for someone
to start an AdSense competitor whose focus is customer service. It seems to be
deeply embedded in Google's DNA not so much to abuse AdSense users as to treat
them like components in a machine. They treat AdSense users much as they do
servers. Uncertain about a server? Toss it; the system is designed to be fault
tolerant.

Maybe Google thinks they have to behave this way to scale. But my gut tells me
they could get away with being a lot nicer and still scale. If so there is an
opportunity for a competitor to move in here and surprise people with better
customer service, as Zappos did in shoes.

It could help to have better fraud detection technology. The more accurately
you can tell the innocent from the guilty, the less draconian you need to be
with the innocent. And while it sounds unlike Google to have left room to do
significantly better, the way they treat the innocent implies their technology
may be insufficient.

~~~
ajross
But who are the "customers"? There are no less than _FOUR_ parties at play
here: Google, the ad buyer, the content provider, and the consumer. And none
of their interests are very well aligned. Being "nice" to questionably
fraudulent activity (because let's be clear: delaying a fraud ban means that
on the margins, they will miss some valid bans and thus lose money for
themselves and their advertisers) hurts Google and the consumer at the expense
of the interests of smaller content vendors.

I think the audience here is skewed. People here (pg included) are too wiling
to see through their web site admin glasses and not think things through from
the other perspectives.

~~~
ellyagg
I'm sorry, but it's insulting that you think those of us who find these
stories disgraceful aren't aware of the issues. You think the audience here is
skewed? I think you are apologizing for Google where no apology is due.

It is not a given that Google's anti-customer service policy is the right one.
There are other tremendously large multinational corporations who have
friendly customer service relationships (e.g., Amazon and Apple) and aside
from being the "right thing to do" it's working pretty darn well for them from
a profit-and-loss perspective.

I don't care how you define "customer". If Google had confiscated 40K from any
partner in circumstances resembling these, and refused contact with their
partner despite having previously assigned them an account rep, I'd find this
shady.

Like pg mentions, this is certainly an opening. Despite your protests,
Google's partners don't like this. When partners don't like something, that's
an opening for competitors. There are several other ad networks, some at least
reputed not to employ such a destructive and passive aggressive customer
service strategy.

The only problem is, Google has a near monopoly for search ads. Can you agree
that near-monopoly power gives a company the power to adopt abusive policies?
It's hard to tell whether Google really is forced to ignore partner emails or
whether they are partly able to get away with it due to their market power.

It's not like companies purposely adopt terrible policies. Of course Google
currently thinks this is the best trade-off. And this is now our bullhorn to
say, no, we don't agree that this is the best trade-off. If we can't hold
Google accountable to showing the faintest bit of decency to this partner in
this circumstance--assuming the facts are correct as related--when _can_ we
complain about a company's policies?

Edit:

People aren't out to get Google. Please, stop with the "I know it's (suddenly,
and frankly inexplicably, IMHO) fashionable to Hate teh Google around here",
which is a fallacy closely related to ad hominem.

Apple and Amazon are the subject of repeated flames like this one? Please cite
a few HN posts where this has come up. Nobody is against Google freezing
problematic accounts. People are against arbitrary-seeming policies and poor
customer service. Flames alone don't matter. The facts of each case _do_
matter. And in the cases that have come across the transom here, the facts
have more often been against Google.

Do you agree that it's in theory possible for a company handling fraud
detection in online transactions to behave unethically? Because it almost
sound like you're saying "fraud detection is hard, let's go shopping!" Just
because a business engages in fraud detection of online transactions doesn't
mean their policies are suddenly above reproach.

We are all well aware of the difficulty of detecting fraud in online
transactions. This isn't new information. What's at dispute is whether Google
is actually forced to treat people poorly during the course of handling online
transactions. Most people say no. Ultimately, the government and/or
competition will decide.

~~~
quanticle
_There are other tremendously large multinational corporations who have
friendly customer service relationships (e.g., Amazon and Apple) and aside
from being the "right thing to do" it's working pretty darn well for them from
a profit-and-loss perspective._

Really? You're citing Apple as a company that's friendlier and more
approachable than Google? Is this the same Apple that routinely pulls apps
from the app store without rhyme or reason? Is this the same Apple that
approves an app quickly, but then takes much longer to approve updates to the
same app? Or is this the same Apple that changes the terms of service to
severely restrict certain forms of functionality (e.g. in-app purchases) just
because that makes its own business model more attractive?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a fan of Google's customer service either. It's
extremely difficult to find an actual person to plead your case. It's even
more difficult to get that person to overturn the decision the algorithm made.
In some cases, it's not even clear that people _have_ the power to overturn
the algorithmic decision. But compared to Google's corporate attitude, Apple
often seems out and out hostile towards developers using its services.

~~~
grabastic
He's probably talking about the Apple that gives customers brand new iphones
or upgraded macbook pros when they experience simple hardware issues with
their original purchase.

~~~
mkramlich
That's because the folks that buy Macbooks are customers.

The folks that buys iOS Dev Licenses are the sharecroppers. Don't like massa's
rules? Get off massa's field. Or go buy and plant your own.

------
mistercow
This is actually an _incredibly_ common practice of Google's, although in most
cases they only make off with a few hundred dollars of ad revenue. I
personally had it happen to me with a blog. They accused me a of "click
fraud", disabled my account, and disappeared with the money they owed me. I
did some research and found the same story repeated dozens of times. This has
been going on for years.

Basically, Google's policies mean that if you don't like a website which uses
AdSense for revenue, you can screw over the owner by sitting at their site and
repeatedly clicking their ads. Google will see the "fraud", assume it was the
site owner doing it, and shut down their account with little to no opportunity
for appeal.

~~~
ajross
The second paragraph seems like something one could test. Have you?

Fraud detection is just hard. And my expectation is that for every legitimate
friendly fire instance there are six or ten "marginal fraudsters" trying to
spin their troubles with Google via blog posts like the one in the link.

I clicked on this thinking it would be a clear case of Google doing something
"evil", and had to read through very carefully before I figured out that it
was just another account freeze. Meh. If it's seriously $40k, then sue them
and figure out what really happened in discovery. _That_ would be a blog post
I'd want to read.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _a clear case of Google doing something "evil"_ //

Using $40k of a service (ad space in this instance) and then refusing to
return the service providers calls and emails for over 12 months may not be
"evil" _per se_ but it's certainly on the malevolent side.

If it ruined someone’s livelihood then I'd say it's getting to be in the locus
of what could well be described as "evil".

For a company to do this without apology demonstrates a pretty serious ethical
deficit (assuming we have the full story before us).

~~~
ajross
You're taking the linked post on an awful lot of (IMHO, unverifiable and
undeserved) faith. Yes, if everything they say is true, Google are jerks at
best. But a blog post does not a reputation for honesty make, sorry. Even
PayPal doesn't hit verifiably honest saints more than one a year or so.

Look, I don't know anything about "hatchlings", I'm just saying I'm not going
to believe a post like this prima facie. They look like a garden variety
spammy facebook game to me. That's a market pretty well known for playing SEO
games and gaming ad systems.

Are these guys guilty or not? No idea. Fight it out, get some evidence, and
_then_ come to the public for support.

~~~
yeldarb
I agree that you shouldn't just take us at our word (and that's why we
included as much documentation as we could to support our case).

But it would make it a heck of a lot easier to defend ourselves if Google had
actually accused us of doing something wrong. To this day we're not even sure
what we're alleged to have done to get our account banned.

------
robomartin
I hate to suggest this. I repeat, I really hate to suggest this:

It is time for those affected to unite behind a push to initiate Congressional
action against Google (and possibly others) for these practice. They are
highly destructive and unfair. These companies ARE huge monopolies. They just
can't be allowed to behave this way.

I am the first one to raise my voice against more government incursions into
our daily lives. However, there are cases where very few options remain on the
table.

Unless Google, eBay, Paypal and others who are committing these kinds of acts
on a daily basis change their tune in a hurry I think that a collision with
government action is unavoidable.

A united front with government backing is probably the only viable option.

~~~
vaksel
alternatively, Google can be slapped with a class action lawsuit

I know their emails always say "we've refunded your money to the
advertiser"...but has anyone seen proof of this? Any of you that advertise
with Adwords Content...ever see a refund for any clicks?

~~~
dangrossman
> ever see a refund for any clicks?

Yes, all the time. Here's what it looks like in the billing summary:

<http://i.imgur.com/JVSVO.png>

The alt text for the question mark graphic: "Your account has been credited
for invalid clicks that escaped automatic detection."

------
kposehn
Unfortunately, this is a reality of using AdSense.

I have never encountered anyone at Google that is malicious and/or gleeful
about this happening. The lack of response comes down to the fact that Google
would rather make sure they get all bad actors and throw out some good than be
more lenient and let some bad actors stay.

There are tens of thousands of AdSense spammers that try to take advantage of
the system. 30-40% of impressions on Google Content Network ads (which run on
AdSense) are complete junk. These impressions are via sites that take
advantage of how easy it is to get in to make a quick buck before Google
catches them.

The ecosystem perpetuates itself because Google's priority is to maximize
overall reach in the market: the more people using AdSense, the more
impressions they get and the more people cookie'd for behavioral data. There
is little concern with banning people unjustifiably as they have a different
priority.

Hatchlings did the right thing by diversifying and if you rely on AdSense,
then you should to. Make sure you work with several networks (many pay better
anyway) and look for other sources of revenue. This is what separates the sad
stories from successes.

~~~
feralchimp
> The lack of response comes down to the fact that Google would rather make
> sure they get all bad actors and throw out some good than be more lenient
> and let some bad actors stay.

If that's indeed their attitude, then they deserve to burn long and hot over
this shit. And nothing excuses a shutdown in communication, period.

The lesson (to me) is "don't rely on AdSense for any make/break percentage of
your revenue."

~~~
darksaga
Agreed. I've had several bad experiences with Google's AdSense and it was a
real pain in the ass to deal with them. They suspected one of my accounts of
click fraud and it took almost 2 years of back and forth to finally get my
money back. Even after all of that, they never reinstated my account.

My general attitude is the same, "Don't rely on Google for anything in which
some kind of monetary relationship is involved." It's just not worth it -
ever.

------
mikecane
Is it my imagination or have I seen many "Google Screwed Us" posts and never
one "Google Made It All Right" posts? It seems to me to be the opposite of
Amazon, where I've seen many glowing posts about CS and very few posts about
things going incredibly bad.

Edit: Amazon is also relevant due to their Android app store and soon in-app
purchasing. I expect them to start an ad network for apps too.

~~~
RexRollman
I have liked Google for a long time but it seems that they really struggle
when it comes to customer service. Hopefully, someone will realize that this
is important, especially when money is at issue, and do something about it.

~~~
ceol
They don't struggle. It just doesn't exist.

------
Steko
"I realize that this probably wasn’t done maliciously and that we were
probably caught up in some algorithm gone awry"

I realize the diplomatic and empathic intent here but to me the whole episode
is really damning if this is how they handle customers. Depriving people of
payment for services rendered goes several steps beyond plain old shitty
customer service.

------
knodi
The issue with google ads is that it only takes one bad vistor to get your ad
sense account disabled.

Go ahead find a site with google ads start clicking the google ad over and
over again until your IP is flagged (ads won't be displayed based on your IP).
With in 30 days the sites ad-sense account will be disabled.

~~~
ktizo
Surely it cannot be that basic?

If it is, then it would be relatively simple to automate this behaviour from a
range of IPs and disable the accounts of hundreds, if not thousands of ad-
sense customers.

~~~
zupreme
Actually, what you have proposed is exactly the approach that some black-hat
practitioners have used to hide click-fraud.

Some guys will setup a script to go to 5 sites (for example) and click ads on
all of them. Their site will be one of the 5. All of the site owners make
money, as do they, and because it's distributed across multiple sites, Google
does not flag the activity as blatant click-fraud.

If you spend any time a BHW you will see these schemes over and over again,
along with people claiming to make hundreds of dollars per day "on
autopilot"....

~~~
ktizo
That is similar, but I was meaning it less in terms of hiding click-fraud and
more in terms of click-fraud-fraud, which would have a far more devastating
effect on googles customers and if it was widespread enough would be
horrendously bad for google as well.

~~~
redthrowaway
I'm not advocating anything illegal, but this _might_ be just what it would
take for Google to fix their policies. Scrape a few million sites with
Adsense, rent a Russian botnet, and spam-click ads until Google takes notice.

~~~
shabble
semi-OT, but I've occasionally wondered if these botnets for hire actually
come with any sort of term of use/AOP. Certain behaviours are more likely to
get the individual zombies identified and potentially notified and cleaned up,
so you'd think the botnet herders would try to minimise (or charge a much
higher rate for) those sorts of activities.

I'm also curious how actually deploying to a rented/borrowed botnet is done -
what's stopping the client from using a payload which nukes and replaces the
controller with one of their own, stealing it from the owner?

~~~
tlrobinson
I don't know for sure, but perhaps the botnet provides higher level
abstractions (DDoS, spam mailer, click bots, etc), or a sandboxed environment.
"Heroku for botnets".

------
misterjangles
It's frightening that this would happen to a company that actually has a
relationship with google in as much as having an account rep. Those of us
nobodys who are just running generic ads with no personal contact would have
no recourse at all.

I will say though, in every one of these cases there is always a _little_
something odd. You never read about this happening without some small thing
that was wonky about the setup. In this case there's a mention of the personal
site without any details of what that is. I'd be curious to know what that
was.

Even still, it sounds like a gross over-reaction.

~~~
discountgenius
Even if the "personal site" is kinkybattledungeonsandfoodfights.com, any
account holder has the right to know what they did wrong.

~~~
paulhauggis
The problem is that they don't have any rights. Google makes the rules for
Adsense and you need to follow them. You could try to sue them in court, but
do you really want to spend thousands of dollars and waste all kinds of time?

Something similar happened to me with Amazon. They kicked me off, never gave
me a real reason, had automated responses, and now just ignore me. They also
held $5000 for 3 months. I guess with 100% feedback and no complaints, they
need to worry about me scamming them.

You never think that if you are following all the rules that something like
this will happen to you, but it will. I now will not base any income off of
third-parties.

It might be nice for some secondary income, but the risk is too high that they
will destroy your revenue stream.

It's sick that so many people make these companies thousands and thousands of
dollars/month and they can't even give them the common courtesy of a real
person to talk to when problems like this arise.

The only reason they can get away with it is because they are a de facto
monopoly.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Perhaps having a "right" is too strong of word. But I think anyone that has
been told their account is banned because of some generic "risk" would want to
know exactly what rule they violated... particularly if $40k is at stake. And
while Google may be well within their right to just ban the account and never
speak to the account holder again, then EVERYBODY needs to know that this can
happen without warning and without recourse. I would imagine that the more
people this happens to and the more people that know it, the fewer people
would even start down that path.

The real shame is that it is more likely to scare off more legit accounts than
fraudsters. People with fraud (or gaming the system) in mind are just going to
keep creating accounts and collecting as fast as they can before it gets shut
down... and then move on and do it again.

------
zupreme
This is a textbook example of why it's never smart to hinge one's
profitability upon the whims of another company.

I've been down these paths with Adsense, EPN, and others and I learned the
hard way that affiliate programs and ad revenue can be booming one day and
gone the next.

Now I only build PaaS and SaaS sites (not counting freelancing work on the
side) and I'm a lot happier with a much more stable income from my web apps
that is not dependent on the whims of anybody.

~~~
civilian
SaaS is "software as a service" but what is PaaS? Can you give an example?

~~~
knowtheory
Platform As A Service. Heroku & Amazon Web Services are both examples. In
fact, they're nested examples!

~~~
ghaff
Actually, AWS is generally categorized as Infrastructure-as-a-Service--
although it's added a number of higher-level services that are more PaaS-like.
(EC2 and S3 are definitely IaaS level. Elastic Beanstalk is pretty much a
PaaS. Other services are in-between.)

------
pgrote
What else could Hatchlings have done to prevent this? I know people are
saying, "don't rely on someone else for your profitibility", but if you are
going to work with Google what other steps can you take?

He seems to have done all the right things:

1) Found an account manager. 2) Formed relationships with public google folks.
3) Opened discussions to further integration through continued sales.

~~~
zupreme
Assuming that his accounting of the facts is accurate, he did do all of the
right things. That's why the "Dont rely..." comments are relevant. The
affiliate-program market (and that's all Adsense is - a unique form of
affiliate program) is almost universally open to this type of abuse.

Would you want to work for a company where you never got to meet or talk to
your employer, you never knew for sure how much your paycheck would be, or
exactly when it would be mailed/deposited? That's what we all do when we
signup for Adsense.

------
TomSiegel
My name is Tom Siegel and I work on publisher and ad traffic quality at
Google. Our objective us to keep fraud out of the network while ensuring a
fair process with as much transparency as we can justify. We'll take a look at
the cases mentioned on this thread. If anyone has additional questions or
comments you can email me at tsiegel@google.com. We appreciate the feedback.

~~~
yeldarb
Hi Tom, I am the founder of Hatchlings. Thanks for looking into this. We
completely understand the need to fight fraud. We've spent heavily on
advertising as well and rely on Google and others to make sure our spend is
not going to waste.

Our beef here is not even necessarily with the false positive. The main
problems here are that

a) We have never been accused of wrongdoing by Google. This makes it very hard
to defend ourselves.

b) That it takes making a lot of noise in a very public manner to get any sort
of response.

and c) That we had a working relationship with Google and a track record of
working with our account manager to improve our ad placements, etc.

If there was a legitimate concern with our "traffic quality" why didn't
someone at Google give me a call to talk about it and see what we could do to
fix whatever issues there apparently were?

~~~
TomSiegel
Thanks for the additional context. Will look into this and get back in touch
via email.

------
lancewiggs
This is too large for a small claims court, and too small to retain lawyers
and suit Google.

But the USA has another, well worn, route - class action lawsuits.

This seems ripe for class action, where the class is everyone who has been
locked out of AdWords without reasonable explanation, or reasonable reason.

What is required is a lawyer/firm to assess the amount at stake and
winnability, for them to get a representative case (this one is good) and to
recruit thousands or tens of thousands of members of the class. The lawyers
get a huge percentage of any damages, but the class members get rewarded too,
and the main issue is the Google will take notice and change their behaviour.

In other countries we can use legislation to change the way Google operates.
Check the jurisdiction of your contract with them - and use the appropriate
system.

~~~
erichocean
This is the best idea/solution I've read yet, and a clearly appropriate way
(at least in the US) to deal with Google on this issue.

Well done!

------
JoachimSchipper
[Edited at ~15min, original comment below] This "personal site" was
<http://guitarhero-4.com>, which was a thin affiliate site using a brand name
without permission (ref: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803696>,
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803746>).

I think we've found the problem...

[EDIT: original comment was: Looking at
[http://web.archive.org/web/20110203092609/http://guitarhero-...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110203092609/http://guitarhero-5.com/)
(via <http://i.imgur.com/wWyNd.png>), it appears that this "personal site" was
a seedy affiliate site using a brand name without permission.

I think we've found the problem...]

~~~
yeldarb
It appears that our account rep mis-typed the URL in that email reply. My site
was actually guitarhero-4.com, here's the orignal email we got from them:
<http://i.imgur.com/2mcfo.png>

I honestly don't think that site had anything to do with the ban though as
there was over 2 years in between those two incidents.

~~~
beneth
Don't be so sure. Google has been known to ban Adwords accounts for ads that
were deleted years ago because the content of a domain that has obviously been
allowed to lapse and been re-registered by someone else has changed.

------
jayp
Great timing on the article. Easter is here... good way to acquire new
customers in the "festive" mood.

As the cliché goes: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

------
user24
When Google inevitably smooth this over to avoid the bad PR, just spare a
thought for the hundreds of smaller sites who don't have the option to
generate that kind of press (Google screwed me out of $50 on my blog about
kittens doesn't have the same ring to it)

------
Foy
That's the main problem with automating as much as possible, and having as few
customer service reps as possible. It feels like talking to a brick wall when
something non-standard happens.

If this issue gets resolved in light of the publicity it's now getting, it
just further shows that the Google system is deeply flawed for it's users.

------
newman314
My personal experience with Google is that they have almost a pathological
obsession with making it as hard as possible for you to get in touch with
them.

They operate off the notion that pretty much everything is self-service and
there are no requirements for human support. When Google Enterprise first
started, their only offerings were M-F, don't call us, we'll call you support.
It certainly clashed quite a bit with the traditional expectation of
enterprise customers.

~~~
crag
There is no customer service for Google Apps besides an email. And even that,
you won't get a response for days, besides a canned, "Thank you for contacting
Google...".

And look at their phone, which failed IMHO. One of the main reasons was the
lack of customer service. Like a customer is gonna email you and wait 3 days
for a reply when his phone doesn't work.

And now they are about to release a tablet? Good luck.

~~~
newman314
That sucks for Android users. You want a Nexus device because it has a better
chance of getting an update but otoh support sucks because it is Google.

To be clear, I'm perfectly fine with Google not supporting free products
(although it is good customer service to do so). However, this bad behavior
applies to products and support that customers pay for which IMO is
unacceptable.

------
alan_cx
To me this highlights a much wider issue. Basically, you fall fowl of some
web-admin and that's you banned for life with absolutely no come back what so
ever. And the sad fact is that too often it boils down to a bruised ego, and
then colleagues backing up their friend.

I do not know what to do about it, except for an internet arbitration
organisation to exist that can negotiated between a user and a web site.
Problem is, it would need to be voluntary and as we all know, these sites have
so many users they couldn't care less about the odd user.

------
csomar
I have a similar experience, and this is why I left the Google Services thing.
I signed up for Adsense 6 years ago. I worked with it for 3 years and I was
making $150/month with it. Then I decided to change the payee name (was using
my sisters'). I closed that account and signed up for another one. A month
later, I made around $147 and got my account suspended.

The reason: A risk to advertisers. I tried to contact Google but I received
the same email the author did. I didn't care much, after all, it's $140. Why
would Google care?

But $40K? That's quite serious.

------
officialchicken
Thank you for sharing, and preventing me from potentially falling into this
trap.

I was considering doing an ad based project until I read this.

~~~
campnic
So, you should balance this. There are lots of people out there that do well
serving ads. It really depends on your product and your alternative avenues to
revenue. It is a cautionary tale, but you shouldn't close the door because of
that.

------
grecy
You may want to read "Why I sued Google and won" [1]. The guy has a similar
story to yours, sued Google for the revenue already earned, and won all of it
(it was only ~$700).

For $40k, I'd sure look into it.

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-
goo...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-google-and-
won_b_172403.html)

~~~
cft
If you read the follow-up, you will see that he actually _lost_ an appeal by
Google: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-
bot...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-bothered-to-
ap_b_213176.html)

~~~
ceejayoz
In particular:

> 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. Though AdSense for Domains was
> closed to the public for years, Google did finally open it up December 11,
> 2008, just two days after my account was cancelled. 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.

"If Google would've let me into their private club I wouldn't have had to
trespass in it" probably didn't sit too well with the judge.

------
EGreg
Why would google sooner disable a site showing ads and remove all revenue
streams, than simply stop showing ads to "repeated" violators (based on IP, or
whatever else they use to detect clickfraud) on that site, and only refund
money made by THAT SECTOR the clicks came from?

~~~
Toddward
Presumably, Google assumes that the account owner is the person or entity
committing the click fraud and will find ways to continue perpetrating the
fraud if only an IP or range is blocked. It's probably much less of a headache
to just nuke an account than play a game of cat and mouse with fraudsters.

------
web_chops
Wow, this makes Paypal look like angels. I suppose we are just starting see
the effects of ad monopoly. Once a few more alternatives are taken away, there
will be no where to hide.

------
mccabe44
Google seems to be very good at what they are doing to it's customers & will
continue to do so until someone in that company wakes up & smells the garbage
they hand out. Hatchlings is not the first small enterprise they have taken
advantage of nor are the people who invest their time & money in said "game"
the first or the last. Delve into another of Facebook's "games" called
SuperPokePets (SPP) originally brought to FB by a company called Slide that
Google decided wasn't raking in the big bucks fast enough so executives in
Google decide to stop the game with a minimal warning to it's customers. SPP
in all aspects that we the users could see was making plenty of money to keep
the game active but instead higher-ups decided to hang it up causing loss of
fun & incredible hurt to thousands of children and their parents. Google is a
very selfish,greedy, animal. They will,I hope, eventually find themselves with
very few customers,advertisers,or money which they value the most. Corporate
greed does not go unpunished in this world anymore. They took people's trust &
their money then hung us all out to dry without an apology or a reasonable
explanation. I see no reason to give them anymore of my time or my money.

------
GigabyteCoin
I was banned from adsense about 6 years ago... using my main personal email
account.

I tried to log back in a few times over the years, and after about 4 or 5
years I was told that they no longer had any record of my account.

I signed up again (using the same email and personal information) without a
hitch. I have been receiving checks for many months now.

------
orijing
I have a question about what happens when an account gets disabled/suspended
while there's a positive balance. Does Google keep that surplus, or return it
to advertisers? If the former, that's truly evil, so let's say the latter.

If they return to advertisers, would they suddenly see a drop in their budget
spent, and number of clicks produced? For example, say I have an AdWords
account and yesterday I owe Google $100 for 100 clicks, and today someone who
had a balance from my ads got suspended, and they generated 2 clicks at $1
each. Does my bill go down to $98, and clicks to 98? If so, that's pretty
weird.

Does anyone who has an AdWords account know?

~~~
harshreality
dangrossman posted a link to a screenshot showing "click quality" account
credits.

search this HN thread for "in the billing summary" to find it.

------
sojacques
I would like to make sure that people here understand one thing. The
hatchlings guys are doing it wrong.

Who's to blame in this story? The guys who based their business on something
they had absolutely no control on, or the company using algorithms to protect
its customers (the advertisers)? I am absolutely not defending Google here,
but honestly, this has been said a thousand times, ffs, do not base your
business on AdSense.

Better, the more people stop using AdSense, the easier it is gonna be for a
competitor (your next startup?) to come, and the more chance we have to see a
change coming from Google.

------
cinquemb
I spread the word, sorry for your problems, but they will help other people
and me (and you too once you swallow your pride).

Keep working at it, you got something. The fact that they are even willing to
screw you tells you so.

------
Matt_Mickiewicz
Conspiracy Theory: Isn't this a great way to boost earnings before the end of
a quarter? "Hey, we have a $50 million shortfall, let's close down some
AdSense accounts and take their money".

It's one thing to suspend an account and say "as of tomorrow, we dont want to
do business with you and won't pay you for clicks going forward" - they don't
have to provide a reason, they are a private company and can do whatever they
want.

However, when you're seizing money, whether its hundreds of dollars or tens of
thousands, there needs to be proof and an appeal process. Algorithmically
closing down accounts and seizing cash just doesn't work. Plus, it seems like
it'd be all to easy to get a competitors account shut down by running a bot
and generating fake clicks on their site...

~~~
discountgenius
From the article: "Your outstanding balance and Google’s share of the revenue
will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers.”

Unless Google never refunds to "the affected advertisers," there is no motive
other than preferring algorithms to humans.

------
disordinary
Happened to me, it sucks - luckily it was on a small site and not one that I
was relying on for income. Good lesson not to rely on third party
advertisements in the future.

------
tszming
I guess he will get his account back because someone at Google is looking at
this now, but this also proved that their appeal system is broken for the vast
majority.

------
Havoc
The number of comments mentioning similar events are frightening. I always
thought these were isolated incidents, flukes if you like. Apparently not.

------
conradfr
It happened to me for a blog where adsense was removed for years.

I moved my adwords campain for other business sites since then and advocate it
when I can.

------
sampsonjs
If they're screwing people over, sounds like it's time for a lawsuit, not
yearning for a startup white knight to ride to the rescue.

------
crag
The main problem here is that Google has god awful customers service. Even for
their paying customer on Google Apps. Just terrible.

------
adharmad
There should be a sub-clause to "Don't Be Evil": "Don't Be Indifferent".

~~~
curiouscats
There is. Being indifferent, in certain situations, is being evil.

And Google isn't being indifferent here, there is well documented extreme
hardship created by Google's choice to operate in the way they do. They know
this and choose to continue their behavior. It appears as long as Google
believes it is more profitable to act in this way they will continue to do so.
I would imagine (based on their actions and words) if this behavior was to
negatively impact their estimates of their profits then they would change.

------
adsenseclient
Posting from a throwaway handle, so that there is no way that Google would
track me down.

Our company uses AdSense, and we have not been disabled so far. Our monthly
revenues are much larger than Hatchling's. We have user-generated content.
Despite our MOST extensive, multi-tier keyword-based content screening system,
we are terrorized by Google weekly, from noreply address, that AdSense ads are
disabled on this or that user's page, due to various violations found (often
in the content in obscure languages, e.g. Hungarian , Finnish, Turkish),
threatening to shut down the whole account. We are aware that the account can
be shut down at any moment, and have been diversifying our ad revenue
component for the last couple of years, using CasaleMedia, TribalFusion,
Adbrite, taking conscious cuts in ad revenue compared to AdSense in exchange
for security. Those companies actually care about your revenue.

DO NOT RELY on ADSENSE as a sole revenue provider for your startup! Do not!
AdSense is only a good idea either if your revenue is negligible, or if you
are a highly public high profile client like MySpace, where they KNOW that
they cannot get away without serious negative PR.

~~~
cft
On my opinion, this is why Google Payments never took off: they used the same
smart-ass approach to shut down merchant accounts, knowing when a merchant was
about to commit payment fraud _before_ it was actually committed. In the case
of sale of physical goods, an account termination could be much more harmful,
so people stuck with PayPal, no matter how imperfect it was.

~~~
waqf
I don't understand. If you're smart enough to shut down an account _before_ it
does anything fraudulent, then you have no conceivable excuse not to pay the
balance out when you close the account.

------
powertower
My own experience: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3576084>

------
xxiao
when i hear "don't be evil", i immediately thought whoever said this must have
something that _is_ evil, as for a typical good behaved company, it does not
need say this loudly to itself or somebody else, in fact, this kind of slogan
will not even come to its mind at all.

------
Tomis
On an unrelated note:

> Sorry, due to a security vulnerability this browser is not supported. You
> might like Google Chrome.

I actually hate Google Chrome, it's Internet Explorer 6 with a service pack.
You don't support Opera? Seriously? For a long time Opera has been the most
secure browser on the market, I don't know it's status in the last year. What
security hole?

~~~
yeldarb
They don't honor no-cache headers in the same way that all other browsers do
which allows for duplication of virtual goods in some cases. We've spoken with
their dev team but it's apparently a "feature" not a bug.

Our V2 that is coming out soon will definitely support Opera though.

------
mcbaby
DuckDuckGo

~~~
elliottcarlson
I am downvoting you because this adds nothing to the discussion. While DDG may
be a worthy search engine and a good alternative to Google as a search
destination, it does not offer an alternative or a solution to the problem
that is AdSense related.

~~~
elliottcarlson
(for those downvoting him further - there's no reason to get him hell banned,
pretty sure he got the point!)

