Why I Sued Google (and Won)
huffingtonpost.com
huffingtonpost.com
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.
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?
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.
Google Search Search Partners The Content Network
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.
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.)
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.
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.
The same para-legal would have sufficed with better preparation -- finding out the reasoning for account termination (i.e., non-content domain).
It was the difference between their right to terminate for no reason and any reason.
</sarcasm>
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.
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.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/17/greenspan_harvard_fa...
(Ideas are worthless. Execution is all that matters.)
I think more people would feel that way if legal action wasn't involved. Suits & lawsuits tend to leave a bad taste in people's mouths...
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.)
Aaron
See now even I dislike you a little & I'm not an entrepreneur :)
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.
Writing a "tell all" book and trying to sell it?
Blatently violating the Google TOS, and then suing them because they wouldn't tell you what part of the TOS you violated?
That's 3 pretty big reasons.
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.
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.
Aaron
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.
Aaron
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.
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.
Best of luck.
Aaron
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.
You seem to be someone who enjoys ligitating, so in an effort not to get MY ass sued, I will take a leaf out of the book of Penn Jilette.
You, sir, are a fucker, a shit-stain and a crotch weasel. You're an asshole, a jerk and I probably wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.
Fuck you and the boat you sailed in on.
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.
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.
("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.
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.
Consumerist.com stories: http://consumerist.com/tag/small%20claims%20court/
Consumerist.com How To Guide: http://consumerist.com/5100451/how-to-file-a-lawsuit
http://www.google.com/search?q=small+claims+court
Heck, they've even got a business model around it: look at how many Adwords results there are!
Another point, I don't want to send any extra traffic to the huffpost by "liking" this article.
In terms of their information given for what he probably knew was against their TOS, they were in the wrong. I don't deny that.
My problem comes in when he was awarded the money that was 'gained' by actions that was against their TOS.
That just doesn't make any sense.
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.
http://www.google.com/domainpark/
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.
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.
But that's just my $0.2
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.
Maybe if enough people with canceled accounts file suits, Google will start taking customer service a little more seriously.
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?
Whether or not he violated his terms of service or not, doesn't mean that they had a right to swallow his $700.
oh, wait.
This is the same reason private business in the South are no longer allowed to be Whites-only.
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...
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.
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...
Everybody sue them! We can't compete with them in terms of innovation and services so we better sue them into oblivion by proxy.
Nice try...