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Comment by whymauri | Hacker News Reader

Once again, the resolution of this problem will come down to either the OP knowing a Google employee or a Google employee happening to see this and feeling pity. For the vast majority of people who deal with Google support and don't have access to Google employees how many of us on HN do, when the hammer strikes: they are completely out of options.

I have such little trust in Google's automation for banning accounts that I don't even bother commenting on Youtube or uploading videos anymore. Who know when some innocuous footage that I have will trigger a cascade of copyright strikes and ban my personal GMail? It's like walking around glass.

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I don't understand why the fear of being sued is not preventing Google (and other big players) from misusing their position like this. Is it impossible to sue Google?

It's possible to sue them but how deep are your pockets?

> Is it impossible to sue Google?

Theoretically no but practically yes. Even if they know they are in the wrong and would loose a court case, they still "win" by just dragging it out and making you go broke on legal fees.

Do you really think they'd drag out the case endlessly rather than just having a human spend 5 minutes looking at your account, verifying that it's indeed not malicious, and reinstating it?

Google is worth 1.8 TRILLION dollars. How much would you have to sue them for before they start to give a shit?

1.8T is an unimaginable amount of money.

Their wealth and power rivals many states, yet they act with a level of impunity that most dictatorships will never attain. We can and should break Google and others up into many smaller companies. They'll be less efficient that way, but efficiency is not in itself a goal.

They have in house council coming out their ears, that know the relevant contracts, regulation and precedents by heart, and whose day job it is to manage these issues. They have the budget to delay / protract things indefinitely.

You are paying hundreds of dollars per hour to someone who is discovering your issue.

It's possible,sure. But how do you think that's going to play out?

Unless you lost kin, or a 5 million dollar inheritence due to your issue with Google, you're going to find a way to live with it.

The aim of the lawsuit threat, would not be to actually sue but to get someone to reinstate your account.

The whole idea is that you get a lawyer to be taken seriously instead of been dismissed.

It costs them money to have their lawyers look over a letter from your lawyer. It costs them nothing to ignore your emails. It also separates you from most scammers, that would not get a lawyer because their position is bullshit but will 100% send a bunch of emails to googles support.

I was able to get my Adsense account reinstated simply by sending Google a letter alleging they had breached our contractual agreement. In researching my case I found a lot of people who had sued Google.

One of the most interesting ones was Free Range Content v Google[1] where a number of Adsense publishers had their accounts closed after Google detected invalid click activity on their websites. The publishers sued alleging Google breached the Adsense terms of service.

Incredibly the Court denied Google’s motion to dismiss and allowed the breach of contract claim to continue. Google settled shortly thereafter but the takeaway is that these terms of service contracts are not as ironclad as Google would like you to believe.

[1]https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/califor...

> the resolution of this problem will come down to either the OP knowing a Google employee or a Google employee happening to see this and feeling pity.

In other words you need [transitive] "Google priviledge".

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