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Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

hizook.com

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Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#151

Post by ahoyhere »

gjm11 wrote: post #123
ahoyhere wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He lives in Austria. Which legal system? And even if it was in the US, you'd be very hard-pressed - as a professional - to justify going through the time and effort required, even in small claims court, for $2k. For Google, it is a win/win/win situation... until people holler about it.

If you actually expected them to fight it all the way, that might be true. I suspect, though, that "Google found guilty of stealing customer's money" would be an unpalatable enough headline that they'd settle pretty quickly once the threat was made. But yeah, not being in a country where Google has enough presence to bring them under its jurisdiction could be a problem.

That dude who was on the HuffPost, who sued them for his $700 in missing Adsense money... they fought him in small claims court, even tho their representative was unable to prove a case, they appealed and are dragging it out.

You think they want that kind of precedent known?

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#152

Post by peoplerock »

calambrac wrote: post #118
MattCutts wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

calambrac, I personally agree with you about the wording/tone of the current letter. I would like them to take a look at changing that, although no one will ever be delighted to get that letter.

That's true, it's always going to be a hard letter to get, and I'm sure that most of the time it's being sent to people who deserve to get it. I think a rewrite should simply dispense with the dire accusations, the fake politeness, and the implication that there's a significant human presence behind the individual decision. Don't waste people's time or patronize them, be direct about what's happening and acknowledge…

Yes, it's a nasty, no-easy-solution dilemma: Shugging off the spammers yet not mistreating the "false positive" decent customers that your algorithm bans.

What I find distressing (and would find even more so had I been the victim) is that Google refuses to to identify which part of TOS have been violated. Police and courts have to specify which parts of criminal code a defendant is accused of violating. Can we not get similar fairness from corporate America?

Are you afraid that such clarifications would give too much useful info to actual spammers?

Well, maybe a slight edge. But I might compare this to the dilemma that clarifying legal defendants their constitutional rights ("Miranda" in the U.S.) deprives law enforcement of some opportunities to tap some useful self-incrimination: It's part of the cost of valuing Constitutional rights. Would Google dare to offer its customers some Consumer Bill of Rights?

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#153

Post by blinks »

dhimes wrote: post #127
MattCutts wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

barrkel, I can speak to some of the thinking on the search result ranking side. I believe the feeling has been that asking people to pay for support creates worse incentives, because it turns something that people shouldn't have to do (contact Google for support) into a source of revenue. It's a similar situation to pay-for-inclusion in the search index: a search engine should include as many pages/sites in its index…

it turns something that people shouldn't have to do (contact Google for support) into a source of revenue That's why the model stipulates that [the money] is refundable in the case where there's a genuine grievance

Define genuine grievance?

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#154

Post by lucifer »

calcnerd256 wrote: post #111
swombat wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is obviously an utter and complete waste of space, but I couldn't resist pointing out the irony of someone called "lucifer" failing to see how something is evil.

Irony? Denying that something is evil seems pretty typical for the referent of that symbol.

Actually, the root meaning of the name is 'Light', from which one can arrive at the notion of 'Sight' So what is really ironic is that any sentient would deny their inner lucifer and presume for itself an objective view of truth ...

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#155

Post by brandnewlow »

dcurtis wrote: post #139
jhancock wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately, I do not see this as incompetence. Google has made a choice to not put "enough" of their profits in customer service.

That is the action of an incompetent company.

Well, they seem to have come out $2000 ahead on this one. Perhaps they ran the math and realized "the legal system" was intimidating enough that to deter most who would be forced to look to it for help.

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#156

Post by invisible »

MattCutts wrote: post #42
patio11 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As happy as I am that you're Google's unofficial ombudsman, Matt, you're a big billion dollar company who many of us are intensely reliant on for our businesses. There needs to be a support channel other than "make a PR issue for Google and Matt Cutts will swoop by to save the day". I had a big issue with AdWords earlier this month. Google made it all but impossible for me to reach anyone about it. Earlier this year,…

There is a support channel for appeals, and it sounds like hizook.com submitted an appeal via that channel earlier this week. My guess is that the Google team is already looking into it; I just wanted to let people know that I'd ask the relevant team from my side as well. Given the hundreds of millions of users, tens of millions of webmasters, and many advertisers and publishers that Google interacts with, it would b…

Even if you had a "I need to get this resolved NOW" option that costs $100, I'd be delighted. I've had one false positive and I was never able to get it resolved and I never knew why it occurred. I'm not a huge blogger, I just run a few small unique sites that all adhere properly. I don't even know which site at the time was to blame.

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#157

Post by invisible »

andreyf wrote: post #147
MattCutts wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I doubt that anyone who is using Google for search purposes will need to contact customer support." You'd be surprised. There's still some people who think that when they type in a query, people at Google manually decide which results to show. For every result on the page. For every query. Hundreds of millions of times a day. A lot of those searchers do a search for "John Smith" and then want to talk about why their…

Why not just charge $80/hour for support, and refund it for when people call in to fix false positives in the fraud detector? Seems like a win/win - make money off scammers trying to cheat you, and give people an easy way to re-enable their account.

I cannot stress how important this is! Matt, if you can give one thing to the AdSense team, let this be it. $100 a call, $80 an hour, whatever it may be. If I'm out $1000, I'll pay $100 to try and get it back (especially if I stand to lose $100 within a week of waiting). Snail customer support when it concerns accounts that hold money is not good.

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#158

Post by invisible »

spc476 wrote: post #143
olefoo wrote: post #25

Two points: 1. This is not a problem with Google's Customer Service, it is a problem with their vendor relations. When Google publishes ads on your site, you are selling that space to them. Google is your customer and isn't obligated to tell you a damn thing except that they don't want to buy from you anymore. 2. There is a market opportunity here for an ad network that is willing to find good sites dropped from Goog…

Point 1---true enough, but if I decide to drop BellSouth phone service, I'm still liable for any outstanding amounts I owe them. Why does Google get to walk away without paying what it owes the website owner who hosted the ads?

Which is where his entire opinion fails. Google may be purchasing ad space, but THEY are defining the price. They are also earning profit from my ad space. On top of that, apparently they can refuse payment for past money owed if they wish. It's ludicrous and there needs to be a way to communicate with our "customer" to get them to pay their "bill" (or, you know, reinstate an account we have with them).

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#159

Post by invisible »

traskjd wrote: post #89

I'm surprised to see the default thinking is that there is something dodgy at play here. Jumping from 100 impressions per day to 10,000+ probably just triggered some automatic fraud prevention system.

Yeah, except for the fact that the person had been with AdSense for a year and there was no recourse after the trigger was hit.

Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense

#160

Post by invisible »

coliveira wrote: post #113

One has to understand that Adsense publishers are not clients for Google. There are millions of websites trying to get Adsense working for them, so Google here is the client. Real clients of Google are Adwords advertisers, so these are the ones that they try to please. Anything that makes your site suspect will take you out of the network, and Google makes it very clear that they will do it first and ask questions la…

Google doesn't have a phone support for Adwords either. That's another story, though. Google wouldn't have Adwords customers were it not for AdSense, so I think your point fails in that sense. Google "traps" your money, whether make legally or not, and you never see it again unless you manage to appeal "correctly." Furthermore, there is no proof whatsoever that Google returns all of that money to advertisers. I've never seen a trace of evidence they don't just mark that as profit.
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