I agree. I remember when the first story circulated. It seemed a little fishy and it wasn't entirely clear what terms of service the guy violated, if any at all. Now, it's pretty clear that he did violate the terms of service and didn't have much of a case in the first place.
It's ridiculous, though, that it had to be taken this far in order for him to get a straight answer. I think you really have to question the judgment of the people that, through flawed policies or otherwise, allowed this to happen.
Even if things were allowed to start spiraling out of control it seems like there were opportunities to resolve this at a much lower cost-- both financial and in terms of public image. Why not make a phone call to see what it's all about before sending people off to small claims court with boxes of evidence?
It's flagrant now that we know the story. There's no argument there. It was not so clear when the story first broke. I think the whole point of this is the lengths one has to go to just to get a clear answer.
Not to mention, they had a service specifically designed for what he was doing. They easily could have converted him over to that one instead of cutting him off with nothing more than a vague, canned email about violating terms of service.
This is a bad way to treat customers any way you look at it. I think it's important to treat all customers well-- even the ones you're ending a relationship with.
Google might not actually be interested in customers who may be trying to game the system. Easily revealing the violation would give people like the author reason to try various manipulations to just barely follow TOS and keep the normal AdSense.
By that logic would it be acceptable for a government to not inform citizens of the laws which they are bound by in order to prevent them from finding loopholes? Yeah, I know we're talking about a corporation and not a government, but I just want to put this in a different perspective.
Opacity is not the solution and neither is a policy of permanently banning customers at the first sign of trouble. Besides, a customer gaming the system by barely operating within the rules is still following the rules. Of course, he or she may be in complete violation of the spirit of the rules, but it's technically not a violation. It's likely a flaw in rules.
I'm well aware that there are lots of people out there who are looking to take advantage of the system, but when Google goes around banning anyone who violates a rule or operates on the fringe without any kind of appeal process they're bound to catch someone who just made an honest mistake.
Governments don't have the right to refuse service that corporations do. I'm fine with corporations improving the experience of everyone but those who consider how nearly to approach 'pick a link' text, but it might be nice if an independent arbiter could determine if these bans actually follow the spirit of the rules before enforcing them.
Google has restored accounts that have been wrongly disabled. The length of time that it takes to do this does seem unbearable.
Is that really worse than a service with a simple TOS that can be pulled for no specific reason? I'd prefer to have all the rules on the table, even if the result is a stack of legalese. At least then I know the nature of what I'm dealing with.
What's the moral imperative that Google is overlooking? To patiently explain to somebody trying to game your system exactly which behaviors tipped you off?
If you simply cut people off, no questions, no appeal, no nothing, you will cull a certain number of innocent people. I can't be certain this guy falls into that category, but it seems lame to not try and settle things amicably in cases where there is a good faith effort to comply. It's just more of their crappy customer service.
Remember when axod got the axe a while back? No explanations, no appeal, no contact, no nothing. They did reinstate him, but it took them quite a while.
Expanding on this a bit, I think the 'pick a link' pictured in the image above was definitely grounds for not getting his money. On the other hand, what happens if you have some kind of user generated content, and someone writes the magic words... and you have ads on the page:
Edit: one "good faith effort to comply" might be this: Google says your page is in violation of their terms, and needs changing (perhaps omitting the exact details), and that earnings from it will not be paid. You have the option to accept that, fix your page, and get on with things. Something like that might go a long ways to sort out the wheat from the chaff.
Comming up with a reasonable excuse that you might not be a slimeball is not that hard. Dealing with such people is a waste of time. Tipping people off as to why you think they are a slimeball is also a bad idea.
PS: Never asume everyone at a large company knows what everyone else is doing.
Yeah, I can appreciate that it's not easy, and that there are doubtless legions of slimeballs trying to screw Google and their advertisers over. But when Google screws over an innocent person, that's pretty lame too.
Except that in this case, "the job that he wants to do" (AdSense for parked domains) is explicitly prohibited by the TOS. I don't think Google is the one acting in bad faith.
As a data point - is it possible in AdWords to exclude 'Adsense for Domains'? I didn't see anything like it in a quick look around, but there are a lot of settings. I'm guessing it's there somewhere. Is it on by default? Off by default? (I really don't know; it's not a rhetorical question, but it would be germane to the discussion)
The thing that gets people's sympathy is that Google set up a system to do exactly what he wanted to do a few days later. Couldn't they have struck a deal?
Maybe they could have if he hadn't been such a jerk about it. Note that I'm just going by what he wrote in the article directly linked, I didn't think it worth the time going back through his earlier articles, since the last one HE wrote about it made himself look a bit of a jerk.
Legally, I think they're right. Morally? Not really.