[RasputinsBro]

I worked in advertising and I saw how scared AdSense publishers constantly were of getting banned by Google. I understand that Google has to defend their business, but some times they were really harsh on things that were debatable grey areas. I always thought that Google was just needlessly giving itself a bad reputation as a business partner.

$11M is about 1 hr of Google's revenue (365 x 24 x 11/100000 = 0.96)

EDIT: This actually reminded me of that post a few days ago on HN, about the guy comparing foxes and racoons with some companies in the financial industry, and how some could be winning at the game but losing at the meta-game. Google should be more careful with its meta-game.

[smartician]

11 million is a joke really. I only lost about $250, but it pretty much killed off an otherwise promising potential startup.

[jacquesm]

Alternative reading: they did you a favor by showing you early on that they could kill your startup at a moments notice. That's a lot better than to have 25 people on the payroll and see your advertising contract go up in smoke (which happened to me).

[smartician]

I agree. It also taught me a valuable (and fairly cheap) lesson on not relying on a single source of revenue.

[paulpauper]

yeah if someone slips on your property and gets hurt, you're looking at millions potentially

But a $600+ billion dollar company that steals millions of dollars from thousands of publishers? $11 million . It's as if they measured it down to the penny exactly which is rare because often you see these huge settlement numbers like for tobacco companies, where it seems excessive. But the case where there are the most victims and the most hurt victims and victims that are the most innocent gets the most pathetic, most measured payout. It's the exact opposite of the frivolous lawsuit.

[BaconJuice]

Hi, could you reference me to your edit article? Would love to read it!

[Franciscouzo]

http://epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-half/