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Comment by dfabulich | Hacker News Reader

(Author here.) This is excellent advice for consumer apps/products, (it's especially important to keep enterprise accounts fully separate from your individual consumer accounts), but it wouldn't have helped DroidScript in this case.

DroidScript is a non-profit organization; when they signed up for Google AdMob and Google Play Store, they provided the same tax ID (their EIN) in both cases. Creating separate Google accounts with separate email addresses would not have been sufficient; Google knows that they're paying the same company.

(The ads in question were being run inside the same app that accepts Google subscription revenue. Google can and will follow that thread!)

Creating a subsidiary business for every type of Google account you have would be quite expensive, and, if Google realizes what you're doing, it will make you look like you have something to hide, making you more likely to get banned, not less.

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>Creating a subsidiary business for every type of Google account you have would be quite expensive,

Do you really have to create a separate subsidary business? Why not just get another EIN for the account? Then as far as the online service is concerned, that will be another taxpayer id, unlinked to the original one. The IRS does have limitations[0] (you can only apply for one EIN per day), but as far as I could tell, there is no limit to the number of EINs you can get for your company.

In fact, I would argue that if you are a self-employed person, you should get an EIN and use it when creating accounts at any SAAS that require a social security number.

[0] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

Yeah, you are right, and I don’t disagree with your article either. Our points are different lenses on the idea of account isolation.

If you wonder if a computer system can think logically or if its very stupid, its always the latter.

Computers don't think they just follow programming. The fault always lies at the humans who wrote the code. See HAL in 2010.

HAL was envisioned based on an early approach to AI. Modern AI techniques really don’t fit that model.

Modern AI techniques also don't really work as well as many think; they're awesome, but the hype far exceeds the reality. (For example, self-driving cars are very far away.) A HAL-like approach is actually better for most purposes I've encountered than “throw the problem at a deep neural net”.

The hype is excessive, but a lot of stuff is good enough for the real world even if it’s far from perfect.

Self driving crashes for example are rare enough to make the news. That might not be good enough, but it is a very high bar. We crossed a threshold where it’s significantly more dangerous for someone do 90+MPH on the open road than set their car to do 5 over the speed limit and take a nap on that same trip.

That’s a long way from level 5, but Honda has approval to operate at level 3 where drivers don’t have to monitor road conditions under specific conditions. https://carbuzz.com/news/honda-reveals-first-level-3-self-dr...

> Creating a subsidiary business for every type of Google account you have would be quite expensive

Costs roughly $1000/yr to run a properly sheltered LLC. Just saying, that’s a low barrier to overcome for any company turning modest revenue.

why so expensive? in the UK it's £13/year (under $20)

Depends what US state you choose. In CA, you pay $800 a year for your LLC.

> An $800 annual tax is generally imposed on limited partnerships (LPs), LLCs, ...

Source: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2020/2020-568-booklet.html

It does depend on the state. I am also including registered agents, physical (mailing address) and digital presence. Depending on the nature of the business, insurance is also included in that cost. I did not include increased accounting costs

It can be much cheaper in other good states. $250 to 400 yearly rings a bell for WY, NV, DL

Only if you live in those states. If you live in and operate out of CA, but incorporate in DE, you end up paying both DE and CA franchise taxes.

WY is even less than that--more like $50. $52 if you pay with a credit card. Though you'll need to pay for the registered agent $25 / year.

https://sos.wyo.gov/Business/docs/BusinessFees.pdf https://www.wyomingagents.com/

But yes--if you live in another state, you'll need a company in that state regardless.

It's going to be more expensive than that to get accounts prepared, right?

For small company accounts in the UK, you can file them yourself. It is not completely easy depending on what you are doing but well within the ability of an engineer, as long as you are keeping the relevant receipts etc.

For me, running a company was never expensive, just hassle like sending your annual update to Companies House and understanding the various overlapping communications from HMRC for tax.

Interesting - I thought all companies had to file electronically with tagged accounts - ie you need some level of an accountant.

You can file them online yourself.

https://www.gov.uk/file-your-company-accounts-and-tax-return

if you're a "micro" enterprise (turnover <£500k and fewer than 10 employees) you don't even need to produce a P&L, just a balance sheet

it can be done entirely for free on the Government's Companies House site, which generates your accounts, the regulatory statements and also does your tax return

takes me about 10 minutes a year, sending the figures to an accountant rather than punching them into the government's website would take longer

Is it even per year? I thought the fee was just upon first registration

We have done this in past. At one point we had 4 LLCs with 4 adsense accounts each making $30K per day. There was nothing fishy here it was perfectly legal and 100% legitimate traffic. Over time we even split our large website into multiple domains under these 4 accounts to make them profitable. Google eventually banned all 4 over time without ever telling us why. We shut down out company eventually.

Why were the accounts banned?

"without ever telling us why" indicates that they do not know.

Sometimes one may be able to take a good guess at where one did not comply with the letter or the spirit of a certain rule, but still not be told which specific violation was detected and triggered a ban. Both are useful information and the question could have referred to either.

We do not know. I am sure the banning email must have mentioned something but it was far too vague and non-actionable for us.

There was a Reddit thread just yesterday asking if the bullying stops once you become an adult.

Evidently not. And sadly there’s no teacher to refer to, unless you can afford to shell some real cash.

I had several domains once for a couple of ideas I was working on, due to them taking about a year to do as it was just personal thing I did in spare time in between playing games and attempting to have a life, I decided to domain park them with Adsense.

I set them up. Clicked on each one once to make sure it worked. Closed it. Didn’t open the domains again.

Week later banned from Adsense for click fraud…

I don’t get it. But I really hate Google now.

"make sure it worked" is when the ads are displayed — unless you've accidentally disabled clicks or something..?

This was like in 2005. I didn’t really know what I was doing because it wasn’t adding JS to the page. And when updating the NS records it wasn’t rendering properly. So yes I clicked on the ad. It linked me to the site. And I deemed it working. I also even added my (static) ip to the list for ignored clicks.

> Costs roughly $1000/yr to run a properly sheltered LLC. Just saying, that’s a low barrier to overcome for any company turning modest revenue.

I'm paying $200ish annually in Georgia. Am I missing some major filing requirement? This is a big discrepancy.

OP was including other base fees beyond just the registration fee. The registration fee is $50-$500 annually depending on the state. With most states charging $250 or less.

You are lucky. Over here, it's rather over 2.5k€ because of the accountants, notaries and state taking good care of themselves...

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