Anecdotal but I administrated a small site a while ago that tried to monetize it's modest traffic with google Adsense. Everything was fine until we tried to "cash out" - google is fine taking your business until then, at which point you have to go through a completely automated "ID verification" process, and if you fail once, it's pretty much GG. We couldn't get "verified," and lost several thousand dollars that was in that account, and abandoned the service shortly thereafter.
If you look at Adsense reviews online there are hundreds if not thousands of similar stories. Straight up theft.
Yup! Google did this to me. I ran a forum and decided to put ads on it, which they were happy to do. When I attempted to cash out they accused me of committing clickfraud and refused to pay out. There was no way to appeal.
This is why, to this day, none of the businesses or startups I've been involved with have used Google products if we can avoid it. At the startup I was a founding engineer for we hosted on AWS despite Google's venture fund being one of our investors. Google's products just can't be trusted.
This happened to me as well, I started a forum in college and put Adsense on it; Google accused my account of click fraud, and froze it, keeping all of the ad money. I tried to find ways to appeal, and they didn't care. They could have at least had a 3-strike rule to give you resources to prevent fraud if it were occurring, and an appeal process. The account is frozen to this day (almost 20 years later), and since Google has a monopoly on ads...it was impossible to put anything else up. There were a few, but they were mostly all scammy. I then had some luck with others, and slowly Google bought them all. Microsoft and Yahoo tried to launch competitors but both failed. Google is an ad monopoly, even Microsoft runs Google ads on MSN.
> When I attempted to cash out they accused me of committing clickfraud and refused to pay out. There was no way to appeal.
I'm guessing that you didn't see a lawsuit or small-claims suit as worthwhile, given the amount of money involved?
If Google is doing this to a large number of relatively small-value accounts, maybe it would be reasonable for a class-action suit. IANAL, but I'm guessing Google would do anything to avoid a discovery process regarding this.
I originally started using ad blockers because of the number of people being accused of clicking their own ads. Idk how they can be sure their systems are working properly when it's basically impossible to appeal and show that it's gone wrong.
That's similar to how insurance companies operate in US. They'd take in customers, let those customers pay for the insurance every month, happily taking their money. But then, if there were any significant claims filed, they'd go combing through a person's medical history, application form mistakes, etc, and find an excuse to kick them out of the plan. "Oh, you didn't disclose that you had strep throat 7 years ago on the form, so we can't pay your $10000 one night hospital stay...". Affordable Care Act should have fixed that apparently, but who knows.
It's good to know Google is playing by the same rules.
> Affordable Care Act should have fixed that apparently, but who knows.
Just to clarify what I'm sure rdtsc meant, since that statement can be read two ways.
The ACA codified into law that they cannot do that over a decade ago. He is almost certainly just questioning if they are breaking that law.
Among other things, the ACA no longer lets them charge you different rates if you had strep throat 7 years ago, so the only questions through the marketplace are your county (or zip code?) of residence, your sex, your smoking history and your age.
> He is almost certainly just questioning if they are breaking that law.
That's for clarifying. Yeah, I just meant that I had a vague understanding that this kind of stuff should not be happening any longer based on ACA. But I stopped following years ago. Knowing those companies, guessing they probably found other ways to screw people over.
Whether or not its a marketplace plan, preexisting conditions exclusions or additional charges, and consequently retroactive cancellation based on such exclusions, are prohibited by the ACA.
KYC is required for various terrorism prevention and (moreso) tax reporting reasons, and that's for everywhere, not just Google in the US. What specifically caused it to fail? Using a different name than what was on your identity verification documents? Not being a registered corporation with valid tax withholding information?
You could however be honest and do KYC before onboarding a customer - instead they're happy to let them run ads and end up keeping the money under the excuse of a KYC failure (which they don't have much incentive to rectify).
I suppose they’re afraid of the process putting a damper on signups. The middle of the road option would be to have an easy signup and then you can complete KYC at any point before your first payment.
I think KYC can't ever be honest because at its very foundational core it is the idea that you've let yourself willingly be deputized by the government to spy on those customers without a valid search warrant.
To spy on them and report them for non-crimes, and to deny them services because the specific numbers are above arbitrary thresholds, at arbitrary thresholds, and yes... even below those.
If you're already empowered by the feds to do all these things, what's a little dishonesty on top of all that? As long as you don't fuck over the feds themselves, they'll surely look the other way when bilk free advertising dollars out of those probably-terrorists.
The parent wasn't objecting to KYC. They were objecting to "once you fail automated ID verification once, you're banned from attempting it again, and Google keeps the several thousand dollars they owe you."
This pattern of facts doesn't look like a terrorism prevention system, it looks like theft, you would have a good case in any court with this pattern of facts.
There was no reason given, no appeal process, can't contact anyone at Google to try to sort it out. Just failed. I understand why it's necessary, but they also have zero incentive for it to be good or even functional.
> can't contact anyone at Google to try to sort it out
This is a huge problem with most tech companies. There is little to no human support which ends up with a complete loss of access to accounts and, sometimes, funds. Because the accounts are usually free or funds lost are way too tiny to warrant a suit, there is little to no accountability.
Yep. This is one of the huge reasons why I avoid doing business with/depending on/being exposed to tech companies, especially of the FAANG variety. It is demonstrably too risky.
Ok but if you're supposed to arbitrate disputes then you must be able to contact someone to start that arbitration process, if there's no one to contact then I guess you could go to small claims and get the money.
Ah. Here's the genius part though, and the real business innovation of tech:
>Make a software platform everyone just agrees to click through EULA's for
>Someone realizes, wait, this is a contract. I'm supposed to be able to negotiate.
>Nigh impossible to get in contact with legal.
>If you do, they just ignore you.
>Get more people to do it.
>Business goes under rather than actually try to exist in a world where everyone doesn't just mindlessly accept terms.
Or
>To many small claims court cases, National Court system encourages private arbitration
>Still too expensive.
To be quite frank, and though I'm loathe to make encourage people to send business at lawyers... We live in a world that is entirely the result of our refusal to challenge terms. So many abusive businesses would disappear overnight if suddenly their legal bills went through the roof.
There's no good faith in the vast majority of contracts anymore because all of it is take it or leave it levels of abusive.
> Yet, news publishers’ advertising revenue has significantly declined.
Cry me a river.
Our local newspaper (the Oxford Mail) is published by Newsquest, the UK subsidiary of Gannett. It is dreck. Pure unreadable dreck. All the 2008-era clickbait techniques you can think of; churnalism that does little more than repeat press releases; stories taken straight from Facebook "Spotted" groups or Twitter with no added value whatsoever; all surrounded by more animated ads than you thought it was possible to cram onto one single page.
This isn't atypical - pretty much every town in Britain has had its newspaper gobbled up by Gannett or one of two other giants (Reach and National World). Local journalism is basically dead now.
I am absolutely no fan of Google, but Gannett deserves to go out of business and leave the oxygen for genuine local reporting.
The perfect victim is never going to sue Google, because the perfect victim doesn't have the resources to sue Google.
It's just like with Epic Games vs. Apple: a lot of people hate Epic, which is fine and justified, but who else is going to sue Apple? I'm an App Store developer, but I can't afford to sue Apple. Some local newspaper is never going to sue Google (or Gannett for that matter).
> a lot of people hate Epic, which is fine and justified
Do they? genuine question, I'm mostly out of the loop. They seem to have built a genuine economy and ecosystem around their products and people love Fortnite.
Darkest Dungeon 2 was exclusive to Epic during the beta period and people were _furious_ on Steam.
Metro: Last Light had preorders on Steam and then went Epic exclusive a few days before release, having sold hundreds of copies on Steam. Steam spanked them and they honored the preorders, but didn't sell new copies until the exclusive was done. This is the reason I never bought the game, even though I love the series and bought the books based on the first game.
I am also against exclusives because I find them anti-user. I don't think Steam ever did exclusives (there are games that are only released on Steam, but not because of any exclusive deals, but because the developer simply never released them anywhere else).
Kids may love Fortnite. Their parents love it less when Epic steals hundreds of millions of dollars from them [1]
Players tend to focus their complaints on Epic's "customer service", and use of exclusive titles in their store, with somewhat less attention going to the invasive DRM/spyware aspects of EGS, EOS, and EAC [2]
This is like how your civil rights are often created, by very flawed victims.
The Miranda rights people claim when accosted by the police in the USA were created by judges during the appeal of Ernesto Miranda's conviction for a smorgasbord of serious offenses. The panel ruled his statements weren't legally taken, and now we can all require the police to make sure we understand our rights before they try to take them from us.
The problem with local news is multifaceted, but three of the major problems are:
- The money moved away from publishers towards ad platforms
- The publishers all got bought by asshole private equity guys who are deliberately crashing the papers as a cash out strategy
- Wider distribution in the absence of strong anti-trust enforcement rewards conglomeration
So, the situation today is that every small local paper, which was a perfectly profitable business in the 80s is now a two page rag owned by a national chain that has planned out how to maximize profit between now and when their last subscriber dies of old age, at which point it will default and screw their creditors.
The "asshole" private equity guys are buying failing papers and making them fail faster. Lack of ad revenue could be why they are failing in the first place and looking to sell.
I tried running ads through google and everything was fine for about a week after I created my account until I decided to update my credit card information for a new card (the old one was expiring soon). Google banned me immediately after I changed the information. Both cards were mine and both from the same bank, same address, etc. Ever since that happened google is asking me to pay ~$8 or so but when I try to pay they are not allowing me to pay because my account is banned. The appeals didn’t work and any attempt of opening a new account fail and I get banned again.
I got so annoyed that I’ve been pretty much declining all google job offers ever since. It got to the point that a google recruiter threatened me that there is a limit on how many times I can decline and I will never be able to get a job at google. Fine by me. Told them to never call me again.
My recommendation is always to avoid google ads if you can
I have asked Google to stop contacting me with potential employment offers for many years now. They are clearly not interested in offering that sort of courtesy to the general public.
As much a really don't like Google, I'm afraid newspapers are losing traffic and thus revenue from their own mistakes. Example here: We're all using HN to learn about this article. If I go to the front page of USA TODAY, I'm show a buntch of useless articles and news that are irrelevant to me. That's the only wining strategty: Google uses algorithms to optimize user experency, legacy newspapers still belive that they are the ones that will dictactate what you'll read or not.
Gannett/USAToday seem to own about every local paper anymore. Their business model is to charge a low price, then jack it up in a year hoping you won't notice. Then not offer refunds and make you call and wait a long time to cancel. My last experience canceling was so bad I'll never sign up with another of their papers.
All of that out of the way, this lawsuit has merit IMO. Google's ad monopoly should be broken up, or at worst better regulated. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, for now, and all that.
Their strategy is to also not have enough reporters to cover local issues. Local newspapers used to put in a lot of effort to find the news. Other than the local high school sports (which they cover more than the small local papers used to )
My parents still subscribe to a Gannett paper for some reason even though they always talk about how awful it has become. All of the news is 2 days old because the actual newspapers are printed in another state now. I know one of their journalists who lives about 150 miles from the area that the newspaper covers since they don't pay him enough to live in the locale he's writing about.
"The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy; no more, no less." ~ Maxim 29.
But I'm content to grab popcorn and watch a dinosaur fight a dragon on this one. Neither company here has clean hands and it's high time someone spent the money to force Congress and the courts to step in and lay some ground rules for the sandbox so all the kiddies can play together nicely.
The reason the newspaper is showing you a bunch of garbage is because Google has basically forced them to. They need the articles on the main page that will push them up in search results.
It's not even what articles they show on the front page, it extends into the content within the article. (Not that USA Today was ever great)
If you go back to the late 90s when the newspapers first went online they weren't putting all the garbage on the front page.
The lawsuit isn't asking a court to destroy Google's algorithms. It's demanding a competitive ad market that isn't monopolized by Google, so that content creators get a larger share of the revenue they are ultimately responsible for.
It's only a monopoly on Google's side because site owners use Adsense, so companies running ads go to Adwords to advertise on these sites. What remains to be seen is if Google is actually pulling any anti-competitive tactics to prevent people from leaving adsense or keep ad companies running on Adwords.
> What remains to be seen is if Google is actually pulling any anti-competitive tactics to prevent people from leaving adsense or keep ad companies running on Adwords.
That's already public information at this point, following Google's 2020 antitrust case.
I agree there needs to be more evidence of anticompetitive practices. I'm hoping this will be a great opportunity to learn about the digital ad market. I just googled "alternatives to adsense" and it seems like there are many. I have no really informed idea why Google dominates with its products.
I assume it ultimately goes back to the search engine, somehow.
Abstract: Approximately 86% of online display advertising space in the U.S. is boughtand sold in real-time on electronic trading venues, which the industry calls “advertising exchanges.” With intermediaries that route buy and sell orders, the structure of the ad market is similar to the structure of electronically traded financial markets. In advertising, a single company, Alphabet (“Google”), simultaneously operates the leading trading venue, as well as the leading intermediaries that buyers and sellers go through to trade. At the same time, Google itself is one of the largest sellers of ad space globally. This Article explains how Google dominates advertising markets by engaging in conduct that lawmakers prohibit in other electronic trading markets: Google’s exchange shares superior trading information and speed with the Google-owned intermediaries, Google steers buy and sell orders to its exchange and websites (Search & YouTube), and Google abuses its access to inside information. In the market for electronically traded equities, we require exchanges to provide traders with fair access to data and speed, we identify and manage intermediary conflicts of interest, and we requiretrading disclosures to help police the market. Because ads now trade on electronic trading venues too, should we borrow these three competition principles to protect the integrity of advertising?
> I have no really informed idea why Google dominates with its products.
Mostly because they actually are the best for most advertisers, both in terms of raw offering (publisher portfolio i.e. "reach" and the tools to understand how your ad campaign is doing and tune it) and the third-party ecosystem of tools that have grown up to manage an ad account. Possibly not the best for publishers (see horror stories of failing to cash out in other threads on this story), but when most of the ads you want to run are in one network, you'll go there. Plus, for all its flaws and the failures that occur from it being a high-value target, for a publisher Google still somehow tends to be the automated ad-matching house least likely to match your readers to scamware that will make them unlikely to come back to your site.
Turns out the problem of automatically matching ads to publishers to human eyeballs is legit-hard and only a few companies have the technical competency to do it well at scale.
I don't buy that, just like I don't buy ageed with the concerns over AI training on public data. Not that I don't understand why people are mad to see others generating revenue off of what they gave away. And all the more so when their business model gets disrupted, but I think it's misplaced. I still don't think anybody is owed a business model though. They can stop publishing online if they don't belive they can do it properly, as can all "creators".
well Yes and No. Again: Google only serves a lot of ads because has a lot traffic, only has traffic because is better at user experience. Otherwise is a tricky case to win.. It wil be extremely hard to prove on court that newspapers don't have any other ad alternatives other than google, hence the case for anti-trust or similar. It will be an interesting case to watch, more political than technical.
The problem most newspapers face is that they have to compete with the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal and none of them can. (And USA TODAY has always been garbage, long before the internet.)
The only categories in which my local paper can compete and win in are local high school sports, local politics and local crime reporting. And that's not much of a business model.
and yes don't get me wrong.. I agree with the general idea behind the lawsuit: Google's is hostile and anti-competitive monopolisitic company. Yet, the initial problem remains, newspapers whant this `ownership` back, but doing so with very biased views, where they will dictate what is `newsworthy` or not
OP likely meant that people no longer want the newspaper to be the only organizations capable of deciding what is 'newsworthy', since before the internet, newspaper and TV news were effectively the only ways anyone found out about the events and happenings going on outside of their daily lives. They're losing because people would rather get more curated news for their interests delivered via algorithm than by going to usatoday.com or buying a paper newspaper and being shown "Sarah Jessica Parker, 'Sex and the City' co-stars 'bummed' about cameo leak" when they couldn't care less.
> curated news for their interests delivered via algorithm
"curated" and "algorithm" are opposites.
In any case, the algorithms don't magically write news stories (though maybe they will now with ChatGPT or whatever). The stories are pulled from the very same newspapers that are being criticized here.
Not at all. An algorithm is curation at scale. Algorithms are made by humans and encode the biases humans want to apply without having to push the buttons themselves to properly bin new input every time it comes in.
The problem being that algorithms have a strict set of rules, human curators are generally looser and introduce a certain amount of entropy into a 'feed'. Entropy can be a 'delighter'.
Their claims seem reasonable, but they don't admit that the other problem is their content isn't worth what it used to be or what they think it's worth.
Yeah, I am a long time Google hater but I still think there are a host of other rent seekers. These Newspapers are getting free distribution and can easily use robots.txt if they want to stop Google. Similarly, I can't help but feel like Europe just does some cash grab once a month and hits Google with some fine about data. I think Google is a scumbag company, but on principle it seems like Europe and Newspapers just try and milk this cash cow they are TOTALLY dependent on rather than truly do anything to erode Googles power.
What is the deal with the anti-EU sentiment? Is there something specific you disagree with, or do you simply think laws shouldnt apply to megacorps? The fines google pays for its continued abuse of user data and anti-competitive business practices are a pittance compared to the EUs annual budget (>180bn EUR this year). Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. They could always just stop doing the shit (or just pull out of the EU).
The EU braintrust brought us stupid cookie banners and now Italy and presumably other countries are trying to ban AI. So specifically, I think a stronger message is sent by moving away from google then rent seeking fines on the per country basis. It lets you virtue signal that you care while presumably a) let Google do whatever it wants if it fills your coffers b) presumably benefit from their data in your intelligence schemes.
> 180bn EUR
Yeah a single fine was 4b so thats 2% of their budget annually and of course in aggregate a lot of money.
So it sounds to me like they want their cake and eat it too. Sounds like Europe wants to benefit from data collection, wants to collect rent, wants to look proactive BUT doesn't want to do anything that causes real change.
Im an American so I am not saying that our government is doing things right, far from it as we're basically living in a corporatacracy. It just seems like Europe doesn't have the culture or business incentives to succeed at tech so they try to extract a pound of flesh. Similarly, they don't have the courage to really protect their citizens. Same bullshit as US watered down bullshit, payoffs and laws more holey than swiss cheese.
Edit: more cynical take is that they don't like Google'd power as it threatens them and they use their influence to cash grab and also try and control Google. Really doubt its particularly benevolent.
> The EU braintrust brought us stupid cookie banners
The EU didnt bring cookie banners. They corps that want to track you did that.
> Italy and presumably other countries are trying to ban AI
FUD
> a single fine was 4b so thats 2% of their budget annually and of course in aggregate a lot of money.
That was the largest fine, its hardly typical. In order to stop paying fines they just need to stop doing their evil shit in the EU - let them keep their evil domestic then its not an issue.
> It just seems like Europe doesn't have the culture or business incentives to succeed at tech so they try to extract a pound of flesh.
We have many of our own successful tech companies. They arent as large as your megacorps because they dont need to be. Note that we also fine our own companies when they abuse peoples privacy.
Not the parent, but I do understand the sentiment and I don't think it's "anti-EU" at all, and parent was clear that they don't like megacorp. Consider the following two step process:
a) Megacorp monetizes people through exploitation, and
b) Nation-states monetize megacorp by levying pointless fines that effect no real change to actually help people
This might not be a very nuanced take about how things work, but is it really a terrible summary? Whether it's casually evil data-mongering, or industrial accidents like oil spills / train derailments, or more directly evil practices like price gouging for drugs that keep people alive.. we see this stuff play out all the time. Government-levied fines for such things don't seem to be working as a disincentive for megacorp, so how many times can you watch it before going full-cynic and just labeling it as a form of rent-seeking?
I'd like to be an optimist that sees a well intentioned government intervening on behalf of the people, but I'm personally running out of patience and faith. I think a lot of people are the same. I'd certainly stop short of saying the EU is completely corrupted, like they are just redirecting the fine-payouts into their politicians pockets or something. And FWIW, as an American I certainly do appreciate the EU's very civilized push for data-regulation/right-to-repair/etc.
But I think we have to admit fines aren't successful at reforming megacorp, or more specifically I don't think GDPR is fixing the internet. Why are things steadily getting worse despite more regulation? Again, not a nuanced take, but when people are looking for an explanation, at some point it's natural to think this looks like rent-seeking, because it's either that or sheer incompetence.
"In 2022, Google made upward of $30 billion in revenue from the sale of ad space on publishers’ websites. That was six times the digital advertising revenue of all U.S. news publications, combined. In a functioning market, no one would expect the middleman to make more than the content creator."
Do they think the only "publishers" are "us news publications" or just purposely misleading readers?
Another point not raised here is that Google Search very likely creates incentives or fears to NOT use non-Google advertising solutions because one of the ranking factors that Google uses is "site speed".
Every single news site is the polar opposite of "speed". They are bloated, filthy, infested monstrosities or code and markup and dependencies that take upwards of 10 seconds to actually yield the non-information they brand as "news". So "site speed" is clearly a bullshit metric.
Chrome removes adsense ads very often for slowing down the rest of the page, at least in my experience. I doubt Google has anything in site speed that specifically ignores google's own ads.
It's been a long time now but I was helping a group at a company I worked for optimized page load time. We used some Google tools to give "insights" as to what we should change.
The main change it recommended was to not load any resource like Javascript from Google as it was slowing down the page.
I wonder where site speed is measured from. If Google Ads and the measurements both take place without routing over the internet, they’d have an unbeatable latency advantage.
With a bit of effort, there is a technical solution for it - that is, prerendering the ad and deferring the connection to the ad network until the page has fully loaded.
There's a lot of preamble, but this part is pretty clear:
>The core of the case and our position is that Google abuses its control over the ad server monopoly to make it increasingly difficult for rival exchanges to run competitive auctions. Further, Google’s exchange rigs its own auctions so Google’s advertisers can buy ad space at bargain prices. That means less investment in online content and fewer ad slots for publishers to sell and advertisers to buy. Google always wins because it takes a growing share of that shrinking pie.
I'm unclear on which pie is shrinking. The sources I could find confirm that digital advertising revenues continue to grow and grow [1], while newspaper digital ad revenues have stayed constant (and print advertising has dropped steadily) [2]. Meanwhile digital subscription revenue -- some of which is presumably driven by search discoverability -- is growing nicely, including that of Gannett [3].
So the question seems more about "how much of the growing digital pie should newspapers receive" as opposed to "Google is building its revenues while destroying a market".
Another thing that needs scrutiny: the ability to purchase ads for another company's trademark or trade name.
It's one thing to buy ads for "best refrigerator", but having to pay for "maytag" to rank against your competitors is extortion. I've seen countless examples of funded, well-capitalized companies starving startups for searches to their brand or trade name. It's happening in my space right now, and I'm already anxious of the ad spend I might have to start paying.
It would feel a lot less wrong if Google wasn't the predominant search engine and if they didn't control how people enter URLs or reach websites.
Also, it's not only newspapers, but also small, independent publishers. Once, there had been a thriving blogsphere, sustained by online advertising, and there were professional bloggers, much like there are now professional YouTubers. Until advertising prices (and thus revenues) went south and this became unsustainable. This roughly coincided with the growing role of Google. It just seems like it's the advertising brokers, who decide (by their pricing model), which kind of media we have and what we have not.
Hedge funds buy up a bunch of newspapers and publishers then lobby for laws to force online platforms to channel money their way, lobby the DOJ and now they're suing and playing the victim.
DOJ should sets standard maximum profit for all ad exchange companies can take
so no one will complain about google taking big profit.
also who use gogle ads anyway its rigged i get paid by clicking their ads
Their thinking seems to be inline with the new Canada online news bill, unfortunately no one trusts politicians, everyone I've talked to outside of Ottawa is suspicious of this bill and thinks it's about censorship.
Why? hopefully not. The reason HN is cool is that content is moderated by the community. That's exactly what you don't get in neither google nor newspapers
dang can sticky posts, but he only does it when there are multiple pages of discussions or to redirect the discussion if it’s a shitshow at that point of time.
While I side with Gannett’s stance on the matter, the internet was around for quite a while before Google showed up. Innovation is what got the company where it is today, and yeah it made the usual hard right into anti-trust behavior, but given how reticent newspapers and old media were to embrace the internet in its inception, I’m loathe to imagine what their solutions for advertising would have been had they been more keen on Internet as a distribution direction. I find, even today, most online publications are essentially lousy with terrible ads that actually impede reading, and old media still has some big problems with monopolistic behavior themselves (see: Sinclair broadcasting https://www.teenvogue.com/story/sinclair-broadcast-group-and... )
Yeah you think a private equity guy who owns thousands of newspapers has valid opinions on anticompetitive practices? A significant reason local news has declined is this author has taken billions off the table and laid off all the reporters. And everybody knows the thing that killed newspapers was Craigslist. News was a good business when you could charge $20 for a used car classified ad.
If you look at Adsense reviews online there are hundreds if not thousands of similar stories. Straight up theft.