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I believe the AdWords policies vary from country to country (and from time to time) but the last I checked (2015), here in India, you had to have at least one verifiable payment method (card/bank account) in order to even activate an AdWords account, leave alone the matter of running up a balance of Euro 100,000.
So how did a 12 y-o manage to do that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They'd presumably be advertising your services though (not the kids website). Easier to establish fraud.
Not your services, affiliate marketing. Much harder to determine who got the payout.
Of course it's the right decision, but doesn't it make a mockery of some fundamental philosophy of the market mechanisms behind Google AdWords that it can be cancelled?
So, you can get away with blowing >$100k on adwords and nobody bats an eye (he was auto-billed), but on AWS I can't spin up more than a few elastic IPs or EBS volumes without going through verification hoops :)
I really thought I had to add a credit card before I could use adwords,and that they charge at the end of the first month.
I feel like there's something missing from this story.
Something definitely smells out of place here. I believe the AdWords policies vary from country to country (and from time to time) but the last I checked (2015), here in India, you had to have at least one verifiable payment method (card/bank account) in order to even activate an AdWords account, leave alone the matter of running up a balance of Euro 100,000. So how did a 12 y-o manage to do that?
I wasn't really listening enough to remember the exact details but it rang true enough for me not to question it. Other than his parents being very trusting or very naive, of course?
/More detail http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/37571304/boy-racks-up-...
"A savings account had been opened in the boy's name and he used those details when signing up for AdWords."
In Austria, you are not contractually capable until you are 14, and from 14-18 you are so only in a limited fashion, as allowed by the assets available to you. Probably Spain has similar laws (age of majority is 18 in Spain), making the whole AdWords contract invalid. So there would not have been any way for Google to get the money. So this most likely wasn't anything 'charitable' done by Google, just the law. Nothin…
Of course it's the right decision, but doesn't it make a mockery of some fundamental philosophy of the market mechanisms behind Google AdWords that it can be cancelled?
So, you can get away with blowing >$100k on adwords and nobody bats an eye (he was auto-billed), but on AWS I can't spin up more than a few elastic IPs or EBS volumes without going through verification hoops :)
1. Get kids to open AdWords accounts for you 2. Spend 100k on each on affiliate marketing. Even a non optimized campaign on a good offer is still going to bring in 5 figures 3. ?????? 4. Profit
Fixed that for you ;)
So, someone in Google's accounting department handled a mistake in a mature and responsible way. Good on them.
There are no mistakes here. The idiot kid wanted publicity at any cost, the idiot parents want to give the kid everything he wants and Google doesn't want any more hostile propaganda in Europe.