[adsenseclient]

I wonder what you would say when you personally experience a $15,000/mo sudden AdSense account shutdown in a bootstrapped startup, with confiscation of $30,0000 earnings already on the account. The email will be just a template to accuse you of "fraudulent activity", and there will be no human at all that you can call. Speaking with the first hand knowledge of the matter.

[throwaway420]

I think that a lot of folks are in denial about some of Google's downright evil business practices because they admire Google's technology and like Google's attitudes towards open source software. I greatly admire this stuff too, but Google has some shocking business practices that quite frankly are unbelievable until you experience it firsthand for yourself.

When you're a small business and Google bans you for some unknown reason and seizes your money - here is what will happen.

* You might receive some type of form letter in response, but you will not be able to get an intelligent reply from a trained customer service agent. * You will not be able to reach anybody on the phone for any price that will help you out. * You will not find out what the issue was that caused a ban. * Your small business will die a slow death. * Depending on the amount of money the owners have (most small businesses don't have a lot) they will struggle to even pay their employees their final checks with this cash seized. * You are forever banned from using AdSense again, so forget starting up another online business ever again.

Google is an amazing company that has some frankly despicable business practices that more people need to pay attention to and call them out for.

[Angostura]

I wonder if anyone has (for example in the UK) simply taken Google to the small claims court to resolve an issue like this.

[OGinparadise]

Google looks after Google and that's it. Exhibit A is search and how much more money Google makes after major updates.

People are in denial but some truth is coming out little by little.

[jholman]

I, of course, know nothing about your case. And if I did, I wouldn't be able to discuss it in public, because it'd get me fired. It must be nice taking shots in public where you know no-one can shoot back.

But since I'm completely ignorant of your case, I'm gonna shoot my mouth off a bit, and hope I don't get in trouble for it.

Google spends insane amounts of effort tracking these cases. I've met lots of six-figure-salary folks who hours or days of every week looking into corner cases. And they're just the tip of the iceberg. Again, I'm not speaking to your particular case, but the thing we learn is that out of every hundred people who say what you're saying, at least 99 of them have repeatedly violated the rules, and more than 50 of them got multiple warnings.

And it's not like Google is keeping the money. Google's fraud-fighting effort is not a profit centre, by any stretch.

I'm not saying that Customer Service is Google's forte, but the internet is full of a lot of lies, and lots of them are told by people who tried to scam us, or scam our customers, and are hilariously outraged that we caught them.

[hellotoruser]

I am posting this from Tor, since we are still dependent on Google in many ways. We had a similar situation, where a growing startup that many people here may know about (getting 15000+ signups per day at the time, now more) was getting threats from AdSense that some of our pages violated some vague and amorphous content policies that are actually written to be violated (and 99% of AdSense publishers that do not 100% control their content violate them- think of Myspace.com for example- but they were too big to violate AdSense policies). Our account bringing over $10,000/mo was shut down.

We have documented everything and we are now in a much stronger position, thanks to our users. We have access to Techcrunch/Techdirt, and we have considered publishing a comprehensive documented story of our experience with AdSense, but decided to put it on hold, since we do not want to associate our name with any controversy. When our start-up successfully exits or if it fails, the situation may change.

I just want to add a couple of things to jholman:

You start from the presumption of guilt. An old adage is that your customer is always right, but your starting point is the opposite. This is probably driven by hubris, that's embedded in Google's DNA: you KNOW BEFORE your customer that your customer wants to commit fraud, BEFORE they have actually committed it.

My point is simple: when you threaten to turn off a $5,000+/mo client, provide knowledgeable PHONE SUPPORT. Have your specialist CALL the victim business. These amounts are not a small change to many people, they will lead to bad PR, like was linked in this thread earlier https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803568.

And do not worry, you will not get fired for defending Google!

[mentat]

You could have left the first two paragraphs off and the tone of the post would have been much improved. It sounds like you've got a chip on your shoulder which impacts the positive impact your (unofficial) representation could have.

[DanBC]

I'd be spitting feathers!

But customers don't have to buy from you, and they don't have to give you a reason when they stop buying from you.