So some guy named Aaron Greenspan of Think Computer Corporation sued google.The article is pretty long so I’ll give you the gist of it.
He had a website and signed up for adsense like any enterprising webmaster. The name of the website was SEO optimized, etc. so he got a lot of hits and was able to earn $721.00 in google adsense money.
All of a sudden google adsense terminates his account saying it “posed a risk to the advertisers” or something to that effect. This guy is apparently really pissed because he makes phone calls, sends emails and makes more phone calls to all these different google departments, but he gets is a bunch of red tape.
He decides to take google to small claims court, suing google for $721.00. Google’s defense was that they could terminate any account for any reason. The guys defense was this:
“Google can terminate your account for any reason,” she [Google's paralegal] told me.
“Not any reason,” I said. “Not because I have blue eyes. Or brown eyes.” After being told to quiet down by the courtroom guard, we decided that we had reached an impasse, exchanged documents, and went back into the court room.
[...] She claimed that Google could terminate accounts for any or no reason, and that I had agreed to such terms by signing up for AdSense in the first place. She even said that I’d admitted to violating the terms of service when I sent in my appeal form, because I had mentioned that my new domain name was only a placeholder site.
In fact, clause 6 of the AdSense for Content Terms and Conditions does not allow Google to terminate accounts for “no” reason–only “any” reason.
[...]“I don’t think I have the power here in Palo Alto small claims court to make you reinstate his account, but I think you owe this young man $721,” he said finally. “I think there might be money in Google’s treasury for that.”
In the end, printed on a baby blue sheet of paper by the clerk’s aging dot matrix printer, the judgment was actually entered for $761.00 total, due to the $40.00 court costs. I couldn’t help but to smile in front of the judge.
My problem with this is the judge is completely wrong. If the information here is correct, right?
So Google can terminate the account for “any” reason. And this scumbags site was a placeholder site, which is a violation… well then…
This guy is a scumbag, right? Anyone who has the time to go through all of this trouble just to get $721.00 from Google, money that was earned from a direct violation of Google’s Terms and Services because placeholder sites are kind of scumbaggy, is a fucking dick.
Placeholder sites only exist to take traffic from other useful sites and waste you’re fucking time. They’re often misleading and just generally obnoxious.
And even if his initial intention wasn’t to use the domain as a placeholder, he did use it as such and should expect the consequences, no? I would be pissed too, if this happened to me. But isn’t this a time where you just cut your losses?
What do you think?
They were right to term the account but any money earned before that should have been paid.
our ad sense account got terminated after we made over 300 bucks from our fans clicking ads. I should have taken them to small claims court, but i just dont have the time. Google is cool until they have all your information or wont pay you money.