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Google just shut down our $1M business

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#51

Post by jen20 »

afandian wrote: post #23
logicalmonster wrote: post #14

OP seems like he'll hopefully be fine, but there's probably been many people like this who aren't fine. I'm sure many people lose their jobs when an advertiser is banned for some dumb and false reason. I'm sure some people fall into depression and commit suicide when their life's work is destroyed. Can't the allegedly smartest company on Earth figure out some solution to help people in these extreme cases? Especially…

> Can't the allegedly smartest company on Earth figure out some solution to help people in these extreme cases? I was in a different but comparable situation with Google. I closed my paid account, they claimed I owe them money, and the only way of replying is to log in with said non-existent account. It's a trivially foreseeable situation, and trivially detected. I bet it's quite common too. If a reasonably intellige…

Not caring about such basic edge cases makes them incompetent, of course.

Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#52

Post by noctis »

carlosjobim wrote: post #46
reilly3000 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search is not new, nor is directory advertising. Google didn’t bring anything to the table in the digital ad world until post-YouTube and Doubleclick acquisition. Overture, aka Yahoo search ads created the ecosystem that Google ultimately cloned for their business model. The only thing that Google really brought value was simple UX and better-than-average search results thanks to PageRank and such. Every B2C service…

> Google has done nothing particularly special to create opportunities for very small businesses online I couldn't disagree more with you. For anybody selling online, Google brings most if not all paying customers and other search engines bring so few as to be irrelevant. If Google isn't bringing anything to the table, how come they are so dominant and raking in so much money? Why couldn't Yahoo compete? And don't sa…

Because they kinda caught the opportunity? If Google didn't, someone else would.

> If Google isn't bringing anything to the table, how come they are so dominant and raking in so much money? Why couldn't Yahoo compete?

> But Google has been one of the biggest blessings ever for small businesses and individual founders trying to make a living.

Please note that competition in search market is different from providing small businesses with advertising opportunities. The "blessings" came from their position being the dominant search provider, not from their being Google.

Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#53

Post by cinntaile »

yyyk wrote: post #20
cinntaile wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. It wasn't as concise as I'd hoped for (I wanted about the same number of words as the parent comment) but it's a good summary.

Hmm. It misses the ironic 'thanks to HN advice' point, and more importantly it mixes up suspensions (if I understand correctly): the main ads account was not suspended again *. First the secondary ads account was suspended and only then the main ads account. * This proves ChatGPT has no world model. If it had one, it would have been aware that undoing a Google suspension is impossible, therefore no account can be sus…

I got -3 for asking that question, I guess there are more people that do text summarizing for a living than I expected on HN.

It missing the ironic point isn't that big of a deal in a summary tbh, I wouldn't have included that either. Your other point stands though, that's an important detail to get right ä.

Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#55

Post by noitpmeder »

nr2x wrote: post #50
logicalmonster wrote: post #14

OP seems like he'll hopefully be fine, but there's probably been many people like this who aren't fine. I'm sure many people lose their jobs when an advertiser is banned for some dumb and false reason. I'm sure some people fall into depression and commit suicide when their life's work is destroyed. Can't the allegedly smartest company on Earth figure out some solution to help people in these extreme cases? Especially…

Yeah, with 190k headcount most of these people aren’t exactly head of the class.

You're kidding right? Google's average employee is almost assuredly more capable than top performers in almost any other company. They probably have more actual "head of the class" people than any other company on the planet.

Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#57

Post by afandian »

maxbond wrote: post #40
afandian wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can't the allegedly smartest company on Earth figure out some solution to help people in these extreme cases? I was in a different but comparable situation with Google. I closed my paid account, they claimed I owe them money, and the only way of replying is to log in with said non-existent account. It's a trivially foreseeable situation, and trivially detected. I bet it's quite common too. If a reasonably intellige…

I bet there's lots of people who do care, I think it's usually the structure of an organization that stops problems from getting solved and not the moral failing of any individual. It's entirely possible that literally everyone involved wants to get it fixed, there's a ticket with 100 comments below it detailing how the fix will be implemented, but everytime it makes it into the sprint it gets kicked out and quarter…

Yes, that's very plausible that things could play out that way. But when the stakes are this high, and in an organization as highly staffed as Google, that's pure negligence. Someone designed these emails I'm getting, and designed the workflow.

Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#58

Post by lenkite »

carlosjobim wrote: post #38
nhchris wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn't for Google, it would be someone else delivering ads online. Gratitude for their near-complete takeover of that market is severely misplaced.

What is hindering someone else from competing with Google on search? Google is awful when it comes to things such as censorship and free speech, but it is a boon to business competition, compared to how things where before.

"What is hindering someone else from competing with Google on search? "

Mergers and Acquisitions

https://qz.com/1920334/the-acquisitions-that-built-googles-m...

Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#59

Post by gus_massa »

ezekg wrote: post #9
gus_massa wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps between "normal" and "insta-perma-death" they should have some intermediate state, like "suspended-for-a-week" or "under-parole".

This is Google we're talking about, where you can only talk to robots.

YouTube have some intermediate states for copyright violations, so it's possible.

Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#60

Post by GoblinSlayer »

carlosjobim wrote: post #41
santoshalper wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are mistaking Google for "The Internet", believe me, someone else would be thrilled to show us ads.

What's hindering someone else? I'm not talking about ads only, but also search. Google brings customers without the business having to pay anything to anybody or suck up to industry cartels.

There's a meme that ads must be based on covert tracking, and google analytics being everywhere is the most powerful covert tracker, also built into Chrome.
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