Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–168 of 168 posts

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#161

Post by pktgen »

dangrossman wrote: post #152
dhimes wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you challenge the legitimacy of the contract? Not every contract stands up to court scrutiny.

Google has good lawyers, and their terms are both brief and written in plain English with no "fine print". Printed, the AdSense terms are less than two pages long. The part about termination and forfeiting unpaid commissions is two sentences long. There's not much to argue or for a court to "scrutinize". The fact that a large number of people have had five-figure payments forfeited under this agreement (sufficient to…

> The fact that a large number of people have had five-figure payments forfeited under this agreement (sufficient to afford and warrant evaluating options like this), yet none of them have invalidated the contract in a courtroom thus far AFAIK, is pretty good evidence that there's nothing so unconscionable present that a court would void the contract.

I'm curious if it hasn't happened or if Google has simply settled them all to avoid having their contract challenged in court.

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#162

Post by Silhouette »

dangrossman wrote: post #152
dhimes wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you challenge the legitimacy of the contract? Not every contract stands up to court scrutiny.

Google has good lawyers, and their terms are both brief and written in plain English with no "fine print". Printed, the AdSense terms are less than two pages long. The part about termination and forfeiting unpaid commissions is two sentences long. There's not much to argue or for a court to "scrutinize". The fact that a large number of people have had five-figure payments forfeited under this agreement (sufficient to…

Google has good lawyers, and their terms are both brief and written in plain English with no "fine print".

It doesn't matter how many lawyers they've got. For one thing, in most places in the West, if you're in a small claims court or the equivalent then professional lawyers probably won't be allowed. And if your case is large enough to be heard in full court, it's worth hiring your own lawyer, and they're going to drive a pretty obvious hole through any contract of adhesion where the terms are essentially "We can decide arbitrarily that you're in violation and thus refuse to hold up our end of the deal".

...none of them have invalidated the contract in a courtroom thus far AFAIK...

Are you familiar with the case of Aaron Greenspan?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-goo...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-bot...

The key facts as reported appear to be that he did take them to small claims court after they shut down his account and wouldn't explain why, and he won. They then appealed, and they won, but only after identifying two specific ways in which they considered one of his sites did violate their terms (at least one of which is explicitly identified in the wording they use today, though I don't know whether either or both was at the time) which is all he was asking for in the first place.

Net result: Google were probably out far more in time and money than he was, and got a healthy dose of bad press for their behaviour throughout. The lawyers might call it a win, but I bet neither the accountants nor the PR guys did.

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#163

Post by jclusso »

Banned numerous times. Most of them near the end of the cycle or right after payment confirmed (but before it was sent). All under separate legal entities (name, company tax id, etc).

Had one account that used to do 15k a month which never got banned. Lucky me! Made about 150k before that site was sold.

Had an account that was rapidly growing and was doing near $1k per day when it got banned. Site started exploding and within 2 weeks we had gone from $40 a day to $700+. Cycle ended and was banned.

I never violated the TOS on any of my accounts. Never bought traffic or clicked my own ads. If you have half a brain you'd realize its pointless unless you're trying to make a few dollars per day if you're gonna click them yourself.

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#164

Post by dangrossman »

Silhouette wrote: post #162
dangrossman wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has good lawyers, and their terms are both brief and written in plain English with no "fine print". Printed, the AdSense terms are less than two pages long. The part about termination and forfeiting unpaid commissions is two sentences long. There's not much to argue or for a court to "scrutinize". The fact that a large number of people have had five-figure payments forfeited under this agreement (sufficient to…

Google has good lawyers, and their terms are both brief and written in plain English with no "fine print". It doesn't matter how many lawyers they've got. For one thing, in most places in the West, if you're in a small claims court or the equivalent then professional lawyers probably won't be allowed. And if your case is large enough to be heard in full court, it's worth hiring your own lawyer, and they're going to d…

> It doesn't matter how many lawyers they've got.

I said that as evidence that their contracts are likely written to be enforceable.

> Are you familiar with the case of Aaron Greenspan?

To summarize, the contract was entirely enforceable and Mr. Greenspan suffered further losses to bring and defend on appeal a fruitless case. He also proved that Google is not willing to walk away from even small losses.

The answer to "if your AdSense account is terminated, who not just sue?" has little to do with plaintiff/defendant cost ratios, or who looks worse in the media. Most AdSense account holders are just trying to earn a living, not personally finance a negative PR campaign. Few have the resources or inclination for that kind of thing.

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#165

Post by Silhouette »

dangrossman wrote: post #164
Silhouette wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has good lawyers, and their terms are both brief and written in plain English with no "fine print". It doesn't matter how many lawyers they've got. For one thing, in most places in the West, if you're in a small claims court or the equivalent then professional lawyers probably won't be allowed. And if your case is large enough to be heard in full court, it's worth hiring your own lawyer, and they're going to d…

> It doesn't matter how many lawyers they've got. I said that as evidence that their contracts are likely written to be enforceable. > Are you familiar with the case of Aaron Greenspan? To summarize, the contract was entirely enforceable and Mr. Greenspan suffered further losses to bring and defend on appeal a fruitless case. He also proved that Google is not willing to walk away from even small losses. The answer to…

To summarize, the contract was entirely enforceable

That's not a very fair summary. They didn't succeed in arguing that they could drop an account and keep the money without justifying it, which was the point here.

Mr. Greenspan suffered further losses to bring and defend on appeal a fruitless case.

His losses appear to have been about $40 of court fees and whatever he valued his time at, for a suit over about $700-800 in withheld revenues. Presumably the time was by far the more significant cost.

Isn't that rather the point he was trying to make, though? The whole case could have been avoided, saving everyone time and money, if Google had just answered a simple question in the first place. Fighting these cases, even if they win a Pyrrhic victory every time, is not a sustainable strategy.

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#167

Post by cbeach »

I was banned inexplicably from Adsense after several years. Really frustrating, particularly as it was two days before payday and they seized my earnings. Appeals were fruitless (and obviously it's difficult to appeal when you have no idea what they think you've done wrong). If Google continue down this flawed path and blocks publishers that haven't done anything wrong, they'll make a bad name for themselves. Hopefully unable to sit on their laurels for too much longer.

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#168

Post by ensignavenger »

colechristensen wrote: post #90
ensignavenger wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my state (Missouri) Small Claims Court seems to work fairly well for these types of things. It does take a lot of time, so it probably isn't "worth" it in a purely monetary sense, but it is worth it to me in an ethical sense. It is fraud, pure and simple.

It isn't fraud. The legal requirements for such are subtle and numerous, but basically require knowledge and intent which are difficult to prove and unlikely in most or all of these scenarios. Google has to do it's best to serve it's customers on both sides, those who display ads and those who pay for advertisers. Cheating exists, the mechanisms to mitigate that cheating aren't perfect, and each side loses some as a…

I'm not so much concerned that they may make a mistake and close a legitimate account. I think not paying for ads already served, and not responding to queries about it, is enough grounds to take them to court. If Google wants to respond and make an argument as to why they shouldn't be paying for the ads the publisher has served, then they would be free to do so- the problem is they have refused to do so, and I think it is perfectly legitimate for a a publisher to take them to small claims court and demand that explanation.

So yeah, what I probably should have said is, "It smells of fraud, plain and simple". I am open to hearing Google's side of the story.

Post reply on HN