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Comment by chimi | Hacker News Reader

These stories are getting tired. Google is too big to investigate every single exception to their machine rules. We know. We get it. When you have 100 accounts, you can devote time to every exception. When you have 100,000,000 accounts you can't. You have to automate it and with 100,000,000 accounts there are going to be a lot of exceptions to the rules. Even a failure rate of 0.0001% would be enough to fill that cheap blog poach, I mean post, with examples of failures -- some of which were actually successes.

Even at that rate, youtube/google implemented an automated success rate of 99.9999%. Let's get some articles about how they accomplished that. That'd be more interesting than this sensationalist drivel.

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These aren't people who are using a free email service, they are people who are directly generating your company revenue. In many cases a meaningful amount of revenue (Google keeps ~30% so if someone is generating just $1,000 a month that's $3,600 a year directly for Google).

If there is ever a case worthy of using company resources, it's for activities that directly affect its bottom line. Google seems to have bad support for both AdSense and AdWords and it's not because they don't have the resources, it's because they so far have not had to. Competition is what will solve Google's people problem.

I have generated Google a lot of revenue through AdSense over the years and I still live in fear of being cut off and not having any recourse. Yes, I have other revenue streams, but it would be a huge loss that's hard to fill. With any other company I would be confident that they would want the [significant] revenue and would at least work with me, but not Google.

So then why don't you build your own content delivery system and advertising network and create a marketplace with enough advertisers to bring you the same level of income?

If not for Google, you may not have a dime of that money you've earned. I mean, maybe not, right? If so, then you'd have to have gotten that money through someone else doing what Google is doing right? Why not just switch to them if Google does you dirty?

The underlying point here is that you are not Google's customer -- the advertiser is -- and it's in your, Google's, and the advertiser's best interest to treat the advertiser better than they treat you. Otherwise, the customer is going to go to another network that doesn't let fraudsters game them out of click fees.

How many articles have we seen about Facebook doing exactly that? That's much worse IMO. If I'm giving you money, you better be taking it legitimately. If I'm taking your money, the onus is on me to prove I have taken it honestly. If not, I'd totally expect Google to keep the money -- and they don't keep the money -- they give it back to the advertiser or never charge them to begin with.

If you or the other people around here were to keep the money an advertiser gave you and then complained about being fraudulent -- even if it wasn't -- then you'd soon be faced with tons of articles saying "They kept my money even though bots were clicking!!"

And you'd soon be out of business because no one would give you any money.

Google is making the right decisions here. Face it.

Yikes, not sure what I did to set that off. I'm not angry at Google, I'm just stating the fact that as someone who does business with Google I am constantly aware that our arrangement could be gone at any moment at no-fault of my own and without any recourse.

> If not for Google, you may not have a dime of that money you've earned. I mean, maybe not, right? If so, then you'd have to have gotten that money through someone else doing what Google is doing right? Why not just switch to them if Google does you dirty?

And likewise, Google wouldn't have had their cut for that money either. As best as I can tell it's a mutually beneficial relationship, but Google's lack of transparency does shift the balance (while I can yank all my inventory, that only works going forwards, Google can unilaterally decide to not pay you for what they have already taken).

> How many articles have we seen about Facebook doing exactly that? That's much worse IMO. If I'm giving you money, you better be taking it legitimately. If I'm taking your money, the onus is on me to prove I have taken it honestly. If not, I'd totally expect Google to keep the money -- and they don't keep the money -- they give it back to the advertiser or never charge them to begin with.

All of the tools, methods and results of legitimacy are stacked on Google's side and are kept completely secret. If their secret sauce decides to boot you, they don't even let you know what happened, which is especially rich. The same applies to AdWords, Google hosts an auction but keeps everyone in the dark and asks for their trust. Advertisers don't have any say in click fraud either, it's all left to the secret black box.

It's a pretty ridiculous thing on its face. Imagine an employeer takes you into the conference room in the middle of the month and states that they're not happy with something (but won't say what) and that they're going to have to take your past three pay checks and send you on your way. Frustrating to say the least.

AdSense is great, but not perfect.

I think years and years of people focusing on the tiny percentage of people who are wrongly accused by the googleplex is what set me off.

Everyone knows. It's boring. Get over it. It's exactly the way it is supposed to be and there is no better way. All the proposals to get a human involved slow everything down and Google would never have gotten to where they are if they had people wasting their time on every case that cried about being an exception to the rule -- especially since even those who cry about being the exception really aren't the exception.

It's a waste of time and these blog posts are a waste of time and here I am wasting more time.

> Everyone knows. It's boring. Get over it. It's exactly the way it is supposed to be an there is no better way. All the proposals to get a human involved slow everything down and Google would never have gotten to where they are if they had people wasting their time on every case that cried about being an exception to the rule -- especially since even those who cry about being the exception really aren't the exception.

There is a better way, but it's against Google's ethos to not use engineering to solve a problem. That itself is the problem this thread is speaking to. Algorithms are great, except when they're not. Most companies have a way to deal with that, but Google makes it a point of pride to not.

Other fraud systems are not completely controlled by an algorithm. Imagine if Visa banned you from ever being able to accept Visa without an appeals process or even providing any information about what you did wrong? If Visa detects a pattern of fraud they open an investigation and the merchant is a part of this process. It's slow and expensive, but also necessary and has not prevented credit card companies to operate at huge scale.

They disable ad serving in absolutely legitimate AdSense accounts bringing over $10,000 per month just as easily (this has happened to us); without any real possibility for a recourse. These posts are important for any founder or webmaster so they realize the grave inherent risks to their business if they plan to monetize only via AdSense.

The real problem is that there are little if any ways to get your account reinstated. Sure, they have to rely on automation... but if people are banned automagically then people need to be able to appeal it and have an actual human being look into it.

Absolutely, there should be a full blown appeal process. There are a few items in place but in the cases of several YouTubers I have tried to help through this process they often don't result in any additional clarity or reversal.

Spoken like someone who's never dealt with Google's lack of customer service. And where did you get that magical number?

Are they too big to provide some basic customer support and an escalation path? Interestingly enough, if they did this, we wouldn't be seeing their .0001% failures either.

They do provide that. That's why accounts were suddenly re-enabled.

The advertisers are the customers and customers want to know they are paying for clicks from valid opportunities. Google is handling the customer appropriately by banning those that are committing fraud. If you're my sales guy and you defraud my customers I'm going to fire you too.

The dozens of HC comments to the opposite aside, here's a quote that sums it up from the original article:

> "It is not possible to directly contact Google," he said. "No one will speak with you, and there are no other avenues unless you are friends with someone who works there. Once your appeal is rejected, they will not reply to your emails or speak with you further on the issue (they actually tell you that in the rejection letter). It is essentially a LIFETIME ban for your account. Seems fair, right?"

His account was reinstated due to the press coverage, just as many HNers get their accounts back due to the many Googlers who frequent here.

That's not what I would define as customer service.

Right, dozens out of dozens of millions.

It's totally irrational, sensationalist, click bait.

They do provide a very minimal set of resources in that regard, but I doubt it is anything more than someone giving a cursory glance to your appeal and checking some boxes that amount to "should we even care?".

But it is seriously damaging to their company and there are other things they could do:

If they notice apparent click-fraud, they should suspend payments and notify the account holders. If the fraud continues (either this one issue or if it repeats regularly)[1], shut them down.

Like it or not, Google (and others like eBay) have put themselves in the position of supplying people's livelihood. There needs to be more respect for that fact. They've shown that they believe their algorithms can be wrong by reinstating people's accounts when stupid crap like this hits, but I contend that is not good enough. Crap like this should just not be hitting.

They can have automated systems and reasonable algorithms at the same time.

1. Some will probably say this gives fraudsters more chances to learn Google's algorithms. How hard is it to create a new account?

I would say a 99.9999% success rate is a reasonable algorithm.

I would say that statistic is entirely flawed, since we're not only talking about Partner accounts which are far, far less in number than the 100,000,000 figure cited, but the likely minuscule percentage of them actually generating any substantial revenue.

Probably because I made it up. Look, the post had what, 4 very one-sided arguments from people whose credibility is unknown claiming they are honest and Google is cheating them out of money and a couple more who weren't even smart enough to realize they in fact were the very kind of fraudsters Google's algorithms are designed to catch.

Even if it's 99% finding a person to employ who would make fewer mistakes would be a stellar employee -- good luck. Even if you could, at that scale there'd be a tiny fraction of people who actually made money.

How many of the cases of "OMG, Google is shutting me down!" have legitimate grievances? Maybe a tiny fraction? How many of those are "worth" investigating? Even smaller fraction. Heck, those complainers on that guy's blog could have been making $4 a month, who knows. All this has been a complete waste of time. Let's talk about something important.

I'm usually not one to defend Google, but in this case, they are behaving exactly perfectly.

Get back to work.

Surely a company of their size and resources could implement just an appeal system that is just a tad more useful.

Or any appeal system at all.

The only way to get unbanned is to get noticed by a human at Google - through a non-Google channel, because Google channels are specifically designed never to bother humans.

Google channels are specifically designed never to bother humans

This is not really true; Google does answer customer support queries for products that have customer support. Google Wallet and Google Apps are two products with dedicated 24/7 phone support.

There are plenty of channels for customers. If you're a customer. None of these people are customers. Google is their customer and Google is saying they don't want to be their customer anymore because Google doesn't trust them.

Content providers are not the customer. Google is the customer and the content provider is the vendor. Google can make whatever decisions Google wants to make about who they give money too.

If a customer decides to stop being your customer -- for whatever reason -- they are entirely entitled to do that and you are not entitled to their money.

Actually, Google considers everyone "users", not "customers", and "focus on the user" is one of company's core beliefs:

http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/

The tough part is balancing the needs of all users: content creators, advertisers, and viewers.

There's no reason why customer support can't scale. That's just another kind of scaling problem. I think the explanation is actually that it's too expensive and Google has done quite well not offering that level of service.

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