I was blocked indefinitely from Adsense by Google's faulty algorithms (without explanation and with appeals rejected without explanation). I lost the revenue I'd earnt that month, and soon realised Google holds a monopoly in this space, and no one else offered a comparable service.
I'm all for Google's stronghold to be broken. reply
This is the problem, and customer service in Google barely solves anything.
Shockingly, Google allocates their CS to people who pay for their service.
I don't expect 24x7 phone support for free services, but god damnit if my YouTube account gets shut down because of bullshit DMCA requests, or my AdSense account is closed because of fault algorithms suspecting bad-play I expect to have SOME recourse without needing to break out a lawyer and trying to take Google to court.
I have used a wealth of free services and products in my lifetime and NONE have had such piss-poor excuses for support.
> Pay for an Apps account.
I'd rather not need to host my email with Google (another problem I have with their account system, you can no longer make a Google account that isn't a gmail account) just get proper support from them. Even then it doesn't get me support for anything but the Google Apps services, the rest of their support is still garbage.
This happened to a friend of mine:
Shut out of their account for some days, with a "we'll look into it" and no good explanation.
Calling did not help
Well, Google's customers are its product, seeing as it lives off ad revenue. :)
I hear what you are saying though, Google doesn't even care about its own services for what they are, just how much data they can collect from them for advertising.
They're in stark contrast to Microsoft who will keep things on life support forever because they think the service provides value to someone since they can prop it up with funds from elsewhere and a little TLC on occasion, because frequently they can spin them differently or make the changes neccesary for them to become profitable on their own (see BPOS to Office 365).
Nobody forces a business to get big. Nobody forces a business to even exist.
Adsense didn't work for you and you are unhappy with the experience. Does some other company solution works better for you? Then switch. If it doesn't then adsense is giving you the best value for your money and I see no reason for inefficient governments to interfere with how efficient companies function.
edit: I don't mind downvotes but I would appreciate some arguments, especially if you don't agree but you are in favor of free market as opposed to heavily regulated one.
Are you implying that there is a sum of money that could dislodge Googles stranglehold on the search (and therefore search advertising) market? Look at Microsofts efforts with showering Bing with money. If VCs could back a potential Google-killer, what is the chance that it could resist becoming swallowed by Google once the threat was apparent?
> Does some other company solution works better for you? Then switch. If it doesn't then AdSense is giving you the best value for your money
If you are reliant on AdSense and are locked out by a mistake, you're screwed. Google has total dominance, no other platform comes close.
Of course there is advantage in being big, apart from the technology. But that advantage comes from many many people choosing this technology over other options.
ad2. No other platform comes close so let's make it worse so that other ones are closer? I know you think you don't want to make it worse but to improve it. But that's your, or some government opinion. And these opinions are not what led to this dominance. It's quite possible that being led by those opinions it would never succeed, and some other, worse platform would be dominant.