Why? There's no reason Google can't run their services as they see fit. If I don't want you to use my service, that's my choice. There's nothing illegal about it.
For one thing, it's theft. Google not only terminates you but keeps the balance of your advertising payments, potentially going back for months (when Google must have considered all the advertising you were running for them valid, or they'd have terminated you then).
It is not theft. After review Google refunds the earnings to the advertisers who, from Google's standpoint, the publisher is stealing from via click fraud.
And I speak from experience. I know this because a very large ad based site of mine was banned for being in violation of a vague line in their TOS. It was automated and I really didn't know what I was doing wrong. After a month of writing every contact form and google email I could find, I got an actual response and was reinstated after being told what I was doing wrong. Afterwards they withheld a large amount of the prior month's earnings which they refunded to the advertisers.
Sadly, though I was technically in violation, they simply showed me another way to do the exact same thing. There was no fraud, and I was out about two months revenue, but at least I now have a few direct contacts at Adsense for the cost. Very, very expensive contacts...
My main point however is that Google does not keep a penny of the withheld funds. It goes back in full to the advertisers who paid for those clicks.
That's besides the point. It wasn't Google's money to give to the advertiser, it was the publisher's. If there's fraud going on, it's reasonable to withhold that money and return it to the advertiser. But if you have unpaid funds from months back when Google did NOT suspect any fraud, Google takes that and gives it back to the advertisers too -- that's plain theft.
The publisher will always claim it is not fraud no matter what level of investigation Google performs. And Google only refunds the portion of the earnings that they find to be in violation. This to me, as a business owner, seems logical when looking at it from Google's point of view. If I owned Adsense, I can't imagine doing it any differently or more fairly when having to consider both the paying advertiser and the warning publisher. Those two parties will never agree if they were in direct contact so Google has to be the middle man and play the bad guy to at least one of them.
Hacker News patrons would be equally up in arms if the article was about AdWORDS paid ads that a small website owner found to be fake clicks, paid money for, asked for a refund, was refused, and wrote a blog about. Google really can't win.
> Google only refunds the portion of the earnings that they find to be in violation
This is the issue. I've never seen that happen. Every account I've read of a closed AdSense account, accounts that were in good standing for years, has the entire balance of the account taken.
Technically it mioght not be theft, but Google certainly has a clear fiduciary repsonsibility in this case, and violating that is generally a lot more serious than mere theft.
No, they can not run their services as they see fit. Without the law Google as a corporation would not exist. The law on which their existence and the validity of their contracts depends is based on certain legal and social standards and assumptions. One such assumption is that as long as you do not violate the terms of a service agreement, the other side will continue to provide the service.
If Google is incapable or unwilling to present credible evidence in case of alleged contract violations, they are in breach of fundamental social assumptions that will reassert theselves one way or another.
Google certainly knows that. Their calculation is that automated first response is a way to make their service scale, because a high percentage of what they think is click fraud will be click fraud and most of the fraudsters will not fight their decision.
That's fine, but it doesn't mean that people who have not committed click fraud shouldn't fight Google's decision. If Google isn't completely stupid, they will improve their appeals process to filter out justified complaints or regulators will strike them down, and rightly so.
I never said they can break the law, however I don't believe they do. I totally agree you should appeal if you think they're wrong and maybe their systems for doing so suck. By all means call them on that, but I think everyone should be careful not to confuse ignorance with intent.
You did read the bit about how Google was arbitrarily with-holding the advertising revenue his site had generated?
Sounds illegal to me.
If my bank decided they didn't want me as a customer anymore I'm pretty sure I'd want my deposits back (!!!). If I did some work for a customer and then they decided to keep the work, but not pay me, and wouldn't say why, I'm pretty sure they'd end up in court ASAP.
