Ummmm...it sounds like the guy totally violated google's terms of service. He was hosting ads on a domain-squatting site that had no content. The advertisers were refunded their money, and the guy's account was closed down.
As somebody that buys ads from google, I would be pretty pissed off if I found out that i was paying $1 a click for my ads to be on a parked domain...which is why they have their terms set up the way they are.
Yeah, it sounds like the appeals process sucks, and that they didn't give him a real reason, but "you are a leeching douche-bag cancer to the DNS" should be a pretty good hint.
As somebody that buys ads from google, I would be pretty pissed off if I found out that i was paying $1 a click for my ads to be on a parked domain...which is why they have their terms set up the way they are.
But they've now rolled out Adsense for Domains anyway..
Besides, surely it's the context that matters more than the content of the page? If you sell diapers for monkeys (let's say!) and your ad appears on a parked domain called monkeydiapers.com and someone clicks on it, that visitor is probably more likely to be a buyer than someone who clicks on the same ad on a comedy Web site, right?
Not logged into my Adwords account since sometime but surely it would be optional to advertisers whether they want to display ads on parked domains, isn't it?
I agree with your example regarding propensity of the person being a buyer but the advertiser may not want to show his site on a parked domain for, say, branding purposes.
whether they want to display ads on parked domains, isn't it?
When I first noticed that I was getting a ton of worthless traffic, and paying several hundred bucks a week for it, I dug into the AdWords UI, and found only one option to disable, "Content Network". Soon after that, they added the ability to place ads on specific sites...but not the ability to say, "anything except spam sites, including Google's own spam domain hosting service". Of course, Google doesn't talk about their own spam domain hosting service much. But, it's clearly Google being evil. (Apparently most Googlers aren't even aware of this "service" from Google, so I guess it's kept quiet internally, as well.)
and then by "platform" .. Desktop vs iPhone + smart devices.
You can set content network to targeted though, but I don't see any way of totally opting out of parked pages. I agree with you, however, that this is not necessarily what advertisers want, although ultimately I think it could work out if Google maintains quality.
What you say may well be true. But Google was not willing to send a representative to say that in court, or have someone type it into an email, or have one of their many automated systems put that into an email. Google is certainly capable of communicating it's side of things, yet they did not.
We should not have to construct Google's side of things for them. Google is not a retarded person facing the death penalty, unable to defend themselves. They are a multi-billion dollar company with an army of lawyers and an even bigger army of computers, and if one of those computers had displayed a message to this person explaining their side, it is likely we none of this would have happened.
Legally speaking, I think the judge had to rule this way. He didn't contradict the part of the contract that says Google can terminate any account; he just said that regardless of any account termination, Google still has to pay you money if they owe you money. Duh. The account holder presented evidence that Google owed money, and Google presented no evidence that they didn't. End of story.
I remember when Paypal seemed like the most awesome idea since the invention of money, and I remember when they waited until there was a lot of money in my account and then tried to close that account. Is Google only examining accounts to see if they fit the terms of service once they owe the account a lot of money ? It would seem uncharacteristic of them, based on what I know of the company, but it is not implausible. It's the type of shitty thing big corporate bureaucracies do.
Looks like Googe send in a pretty useless paralegal to defend their case. Instead, if they had send you (or someone with the same arguments as you), they'd have probably won.
I think it is fairly obvious what this guy did wrong. I am just surprised Google's paralegal was not apt enough to figure this out.
AFAIK, to win a small claims court, you still have to prove that you deserve the money. I see nowhere in the story he admits to the judge that he violated to ToS. He simply used the lack of customer service at Google/AdSense to win this case. As I mentioned it is amazing that Google sent an unprepared para-legal to defend themselves.
On the contrary, it would have been amazing if Google had sent a highly trained lawyer to deal with this. The amount in question, about $760, is probably less than a day's wages+benefits for a Google lawyer.
If you want to optimize for justice, there are plenty of failures in Google and Google's ad programs. They seem to be pretty clear about their intention of optimizing for profit, though.
Do small claims have any bearing on legal precedent? Could someone site the legal reasoning in this case to also sue Google for their small claims, or even higher amounts?
No, (at least in Canada) they do not. Small claims is not judged by a "real" judge and those courts do not have the ability to set precedent. Same with most traffic courts. Of course you can always bring up the judgment in another small claims court, just won't be taken as rule of law.
It sounds like she just wasn't told (or didn't bother to look up) why Google terminated his account. She couldn't even say for sure if he violated the TOS!
There's nothing wrong with placing ads on a site where there is nothing but ads. What if someone was looking for something? They click the ad.
If you are buying ads space from Google I'd be more concerned about their endorsement of people allowing their widget to blend into other people's sites. I was on a website a couple months ago where the person set up Adsense so nicely that it nearly fooled me into thinking it was part of their menu. If it had been your ad, I would have unwittingly clicked and you'd owe Google and the owner of that site money.
I don't think we've ever met, and I'm not sure what I ever did to you to merit repeated disdainful (and in this case, misleading) jabs in public forums, but I actually think 280 North is really cool and I look forward to seeing where Atlas goes.
In the meantime, my so-called claims (which are narrow and do not include the wild notion that I "invented social networking," but do involve execution and not merely an "idea") were verified by The New York Times and are publicly available for inspection, so they're really facts. The trademark dispute is in the middle of discovery right now, and ironically, there are posts on this thread that support my case--so "tried" wouldn't be the best word to use, either.
Anyway, if you want to selectively link to only articles that call me names, that's your prerogative.
My (very low) opinion of your claims is not based on any Register article, but your own written account of your dealings with Zuckerberg, on p. 294 and up of your book Authoritas, a section I read when you had it online. I commented with my unvarnished opinion long before your Facebook lawsuit [1].
Congratulations on your small-claims win against an unprepared Google paralegal; Google should be held to account for cryptic and arbitrary policies that retract credited balances from users' accounts.
However, in your own writings and lawsuits, you give me the impression that you are a legal gadfly rather than an entrepreneur. That can be a fine niche in life, and the press loves it, but you shouldn't expect a warm reception from aspiring entrepreneurs. Successful businesspeople often have to waste precious time and money defending against, and sometimes even paying off, legal gadflies -- even when the claims are meritless.
Not that I expect to convince of anything, but your interpretation of my writing is awfully skewed. You claim I "dawdled...while Zuckerberg executed." I launched my Universal Face Book, which I coded myself, on September 19, 2003. thefacebook.com launched on February 4, 2004. Throughout those intermediate months I wrote thousands of lines of code, tried to get others interested in maintaining and growing the site, and secured partnerships. That Mark secured funding after using, speaking with me about, and then copying my work does not negate any of my actions.
The "fritter[ing] around with committees" is a phrase you used, not me. The "committee" you speak of was a few of my friends in college who were in the same club.
I didn't sit around "kvetch about media unfairness." I walked into The Crimson and waited until a reporter would talk to me so that I could show them the site.
The "redundant academic make-work" you refer to was a version control system for CS91r, a Harvard class that both Mark and I were in, and had nothing to do with any of your previous points.
The relevant pages of Authoritas are up (they were never taken down), but I have the right to charge for them, especially given that the book is now published. In the meantime, the documents are all available and more easily accessible than the primary sources of just about any other book there is.
The meaning of text from a book being "up" here, so that other commenters can decide for themselves, obviously does not include it being behind a paywall.
If I charge a reasonable amount of money for my work that involved risk to produce, I'm not being transparent enough, but I'm clearly an entrepreneur. If I make everything free, I'm in the good graces of the open source movement thanks to my perfect transparency, but then of course I'm not "really" an entrepreneur.
Come on people! You can't have your cake and eat it too.
I stand by my interpretation of the content now behind your paywall. I am not selling anything.
The bit about the version control system was especially telling. You implied Zuckerberg was shirking classwork to work on his side project. Meanwhile, you volunteered to write a version control system to be used by fellow coders on a speech-recognition class project.
If an entrepreneurially-minded young coder was magically sent back to Spring 2004, what should they work on? A custom version control system to be used by teammates on a single class project, or a college-oriented competitor to Friendster, MySpace, and Orkut?
Let me paraphrase your sentiment here. You think that my fatal flaw is that while simultaneously pursuing the extracurricular interests that included houseSYSTEM and running my own company (which is presently more profitable than Facebook despite its relatively small size), I was diligent in completing my coursework? That's my huge mistake?
As I describe pretty clearly in the book, I worked on the version control system and houseSYSTEM and many other things (everything you now see on http://www.thinkcomputer.com) simultaneously. Even in hindsight, I'm glad I worked on those things. I just wish I hadn't talked to Mark about them.
Like anyone I've made plenty of mistakes, and I'm perfectly willing to discuss them in relation to entrepreneurship, but clearly you've got some sort of other issue with me. Despite my best efforts to figure it out, I still don't know what it is.
I would not use grandiose, loaded terms like "fatal flaw" or "huge mistake". I have no issue with your life choices, only your criticism of Zuckerberg.
In your very first comment at News.YC, you called Zuckerberg a "fraud", and pointed to your book as evidence. [1] I've looked at your evidence, and think you're either imagining things, or exaggerating to promote your career. That's all.
C'mon, you want to compete with MySpace and Friendster and Orkut in 2004? Your business plan is to compete against Google and Friendster? (MySpace hadn't been bought by News Corp. yet, and I think I hadn't heard of it, but maybe an entrepreneurial-minded person would have.)
Sorry if it was misleading. I just thought it was interesting to note, given your history of legal action. As for the link, it was one of the top hits on Google for whatever I searched for at the time.
On the contrary, I think having the limit makes sense precisely in this sort of situation. This is a long-standing member of the community, and he's done something not quite right... He's probably not gonna do it again, since it was clearly rejected by the community. Voting this down to -30 would not have made a difference in the effect on the poster.
By downvoting him, are we encouraging people like Aaron to use HN? Because I really don't think that domain-squatting counts as either hacking or productive economic activity ("making something people want", as pg puts it); when it's being done in order to get paid for worthless clicks, it's borderline fraud. Neither does suing companies engaged in productive activity, such as Google and Facebook. This guy is a menace to all of us who are engaged in trying to make a living by making something people want.
And you want to make sure he feels welcome on this forum?
I mean, admittedly, it's not like he's making his living by destroying the reputations of people who are making things people want (like Valleywag), but he's hardly making a positive contribution. If he had never been born, the world would be that much better for the rest of us.
That's a tricky argument to get into... How do you determine who's worthy and who's not? Who has the power? If you let things go that way, the community becomes elitist and reactionary... Everyone should be welcome to post on this site as long as they are willing to abide by the rules: stay polite, articulate, etc.
Neither does suing companies engaged in productive activity, such as Google
While I agree with you on this with regard to the relative righteousness of a domain squatter suing Google, it's worth noting that Google offers a domain squatting service. They are participating in the very activity you and I consider abhorrent (while also doing productive things, too). In fact, Google very likely makes more money from domain squatting than anyone, since they have a very strong unfair search engine advantage over spam domains from any other provider.
"If he had never been born, the world would be that much better for the rest of us." - according to Aaron's like of argument, Mark would not have gotten from him the Facebook idea and the world would be Facebook none the richer? :P
- I have a super unique idea that nobody has thought of before: an online community where you can connect with friends, send messages and stuff. Keep a lid on it though, I don't want this never-thought-of-before idea to get out!!!
(Ideas are worthless. Execution is all that matters.)
I've never understood all the AG hate on this site. I can see how you could pity the guy, or dismiss him out of hand, but a lot of people on this site seem to hold genuine malice towards him. It's bizzare.
I don't even have an opinion on AG. I'm just saying that having "the idea of Facebook", and that you were the first to have that, is retarded.
First of all, it's a really really old idea.
Second of all, the idea is irrelevant. What made Facebook succeed was the execution. That goes for most of the other online successes as well. Selling books online, or search, aren't novel ideas. Amazon and Google, too, succeeded because of execution. They all did.
What's really strange is that all this hate gets so much positive karma. Anytime I post something like these guys, I get blasted into the negative.
I'd be curious to know the general thought on how often it's appropriate to get yourself into these types of legal issues. (AG seems to have a pretty loose trigger finger when it comes to serving papers.)
He must have his fans, too. Many of his comments have high karma scores, and apparently people like this article he wrote and submitted. I can see why they might not be terribly vocal in the face of all these people willing to be negative, though.
Big same. Bucknell University, where I worked as a teenager on their computer help desk, had an electronic facebook that all the techies jokingly referred to as "Stalker.net". That was 1998.
I don't know when Friendster launched, but i know people who've had profiles since 2002, so again, a "social networking site" had already been done and launched.
-2? Wow. For educational purposes, could those who down voted my comment provide an explanation. I mean... the linked article was about Google and a closed account... and someone seems to remember some Facebook thing and tossed it in, presumably to discredit the subject from the start. If those are not the very definition of OT and ad-hominem, what are they? No biggie, I care little about karma, but I would like to know why?
Small claims court is one of the great levelers, as long as you're literate, calm, and patient. Another one is the art of writing letters on actual paper to people. Because nothing says Serious Business like the magic words Return Receipt Requested.
("I paid the Post Office five dollars extra when I mailed this so that I have admissible proof you got the letter when I sue you for ignoring its contents.")
I used the (well-founded) threat of it to resolve some difficulties after some creditors got the mistaken impression that I owed them money. One letter to get them to stop calling me, one more letter to remind them that the three calls after the first letter mean they owe me $3,000 under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the meter is still running if they want to call me again.
My only regret is that I didn't have enough days off that year to march down the court and actually sue them. I think its... salutary to remind debt collection agencies that the legal system works both ways. For one, if more people did it I'd get less people thinking I owe them money because I share the same first initial, last name, and (former) zipcode as someone who might.
There are a lot of stories about people suing companies in small claims court on the consumerist. A lot of companies don't want to fly someone out there to fight a thousand dollar law suit.
You can even try for damages. There's one story on there about a guy who sued Washington Mutual for $2058 over a $58 overdraft fee.
Is there a possible startup business that helps people go to small claims court and win? A "How to" FAQ of course is useful, but I wonder if there is way to get a business model behind it.
Google was also at fault, because they had to provide a reason for disabling his account. I think it was correct to sue them at least for discouraging such a practice in the future. He was their customer, it is too much to ask for at least a one sentence response from human?
He should have put some content up on the domain before putting the advertisements up. If you have this sort of traffic, why not monetize it properly in a way that doesn't violate the terms of service?
Expecting Google to be as responsive as his own business simply because he is the boss is unrealistic. Nice to see Google giving some young legal interns experience this way. They probably save considerably over having more experienced counsel handle it.
Your claim that putting AdSense on a domain without first publishing some content is against the Google TOS is unsubstantiated. In fact, Google actually advocates publisher to monetize their unused domains with the Adsense for Domains program.
Even if the step was against the TOS, Google should have communicated it clearly and set the record straight. The author doesn’t begrudge that Google disabled his account, rather that Google didn’t inform him the reason for disabling.
And I just want to chime in here and state that I'd be miffed if I had a domain up, generating clicks for Google (in the story the author claims there was no click fraud, and i choose to believe him) and they shut down your account, without reason, and refund money.
Then, two days later, the TOS violation he did is okay, but through another program.
The crux of this, is that the clicks he sent to advertisers (and the eyeballs) were real. If I'm selling a product, I don't care if my customers find me from search results or a squatted domain. All I care about is closing the sale and increasing my business.
Overall, regardless of guilt or no guilt, the fault of Google is lack of notice or ability to contact them for any kind of explanation or resolution. I'm glad this guy sued and won.
This is not the first instance I've heard of this inability to resolve issues being a problem with Google, and obviously it is a chink in their armor. Now if someone wants to go after Google, customer service is definitely a weakness to highlight.
You nailed it on the head. The correct thing for Google to do was to tell AG why they disabled his account, not give him the runaround. They deserved to lose that suit.
Maybe if enough people with canceled accounts file suits, Google will start taking customer service a little more seriously.
I've never used the small claims court to sue large companies. But in genuine disputes my partner and I have used it to sue small businesses where we have been aggrieved. In every single case we've won, even when the disputes were against lawyers for their fees. I know so many people who have been badly treated (e.g. landlords keeping entire deposits claiming because some minor damage happened during their tenancy). Yet none of my friends ever carry through and seek legal justice. I just don't understand their fear of the very simple small claims procedure.
I know it varies by state, but where I live (MA) the small claims limit is $2000. When you take into consideration the amount of time you're sinking into the case, and the risk that you might not win, there is only a small range of damages that are likely worth pursuing in small claims court. If you're in a line of work where you routinely sign contracts, you probably have clearer-cut cases than the average landlord-tenant situation. I think most people hardly understand most contracts they sign, and doubt they understand the range of options offered by the legal system.
So two things would help: raising the small-claims limit (I think $8k or so would make sense) and educating people about the option. Follow-up question: do shows like People's Court serve or hinder the mission of educating people about small claims court?
As much as I like Google, their customer service sucks when you're trying to get in touch with someone. What other customer facing company could get away with something like that? If it was a bank, I'd be speaking to customer service managers. If it was a store, I'd be able to speak with a manager and try to get the issue resolved, or at least be told why my account was canceled.
Whether or not he violated his terms of service or not, doesn't mean that they had a right to swallow his $700.
There's a problem with being litigious: it closes doors for you, and you'll probably never even know what doors they were...if someone does their due diligence, sees you're litigious, and decides not to contact you, it's quite unlikely they'll contact you to let you know they decided not to contact you.
This sort of thing will be the downfall of google. The lack of communication with smaller (1-10K/mth) business partners is a big problem. When you do a certain level of business with them you'd expect to be able to talk to somebody on the phone much less get a response to an email. Communication is worth at least 10c CPM.
The Google Adsense TOS clearly states they can terminate accounts for any reason. And yes that includes having brown hair. You have no right to any of the money. They DON'T owe you ANYTHING! I don't understand why people can't realize this!
I don't know of any that explicitly mention hair color, but there are broader laws where hair color would probably fit in. For example, Title VII of the Civil Rights act prohibits discrimination on traits "associated" with certain racial or ethnic groups.
How much more money could he have made had he put all the time he spent complaining about Google, suing them, and then writing about it into improving his product? Or coming up with something that's at least not totally lame?
At decent programmer salaries, $761 is like 2 days of work. Probably more if you're self employed and have a decent business. There's a reason why startups do their best not to get involved in lawsuits...
Agreed. You don't take Google to small claims court to win $761, you take them to small claims court and win so that you can write about it in the Huffington Post and have a bunch of nerds react to it.
They're protecting the people that buy ads from them, people like me, people with no advertising budget that are just trying to get a few people to check out their stupid blog (http://www.gibsonandlily.com).
Those ads cost something like $1 a click (or more). If I found out that my tiny tiny budget was going to ads on some stupid domain parking website, I would be LIVID.
Yeah, google terminated his account. They did it to protect people like me, and they are the reason the reason that people like me use them.
I'm sorry, but domain parking/squatting/tasting/leeching/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is an instant failure in my book.
If your ad appears on a domain parking site and no one clicks it, it doesn't cost you anything, right? Only when someone clicks the link, right? So if you are advertising your website and someone clicks an advertisement, regardless of where it appeared, that's a problem? I could see it being a problem if you paid per impression, but not for clicks, unless the clicks from a domain parking website have a lower "conversion" factor than other types of domains.
I don't care who the guy is. A contract termination needs to come with a reason, a termination without reason is bullying.
700$ is enough money to make an effort and go to court to settle the sidpute.
What I find it hard to believe is that Google couldn't come up with a reason, I just can't believe they are so incompetent!! Something just doesn't add up...
Can someone explain to me how domain squatters add more value to the world than beggars? (Leaving aside that beggars usually have an excuse for not being able to find productive work.)
I had my Google AdSense account terminated a few years ago, too. I emailed Google asking why and never heard anything back. I remember being frustrated about it since I wasn't doing anything that would have been considered sketchy. I should've sued and become internet famous... ugh.
As somebody that buys ads from google, I would be pretty pissed off if I found out that i was paying $1 a click for my ads to be on a parked domain...which is why they have their terms set up the way they are.
Yeah, it sounds like the appeals process sucks, and that they didn't give him a real reason, but "you are a leeching douche-bag cancer to the DNS" should be a pretty good hint.