I've had my run-in with Google AdSense in the past. My prediction: If they don't change their ways this is headed to a huge class-action lawsuit and nothing but bad press.
My experience was interesting and revealing. I had a bunch of domains (about 200) parked with GoDaddy in something called "cash parking". Not a money maker, but, what the heck. Once I realized that this was actually a service provided by Google I decided to look into cutting-out the middle man.
I looked into AdSense and found AdSense for Domains. Exactly the same service being offered by GoDaddy. I took all 200-some domains off GoDaddy, created an AdSense account and parked all of them with Google. They approved every single domain name and put ads on them. Great.
Two days later I get this email about fraudulent activity and the termination of my AdSense account. I appealed. No love. So, the termination was, effectively, forever.
Here's the irony of this story. The same 200 domains had been parked with GoDaddy for months without any issues. Serviced by Google. They even made a few bucks for all involved. The domains were not advertised in any way anywhere. I just parked them and went on with my business. This means that Google was responsible for sending traffic to these sites, every bit of it. About 50 of the domains were political in nature. Being that this was around election time my guess is that they got more traffic than usual, and, I guess, hits. I'll never know because the account was killed within two days of being formed with no data provided whatsoever.
So: Google sends traffic to the sites. The sites get clicks. They close my AdSense account. No appeal, no recourse, no human being to speak to. Bullshit!
Google needs to get sued in a major way to "reset" some of their behaviors. Why? Because they are a de-facto monopoly. Search is dominated by them. Video (YouTube) is dominated by them. Advertising (AdWords and AdSense) is dominated by them.
They do not provide for any intelligent way to deal with problems. They will tell you that you've done something wrong but will NOT provide proof, details nor an opportunity to rectify the problem. A likely scenario is that of someone just getting started who makes a few mistakes and needs to learn. Google does not provide for any of the above. They are judge, jury and executioner and a pretty mean one at that.
This fellow with the boat site probably deserved a slap on the hand for his site. He did no deserve to loose ALL OF HIS INCOME. They could have easily said something like:
"Your site-based per-click revenue is now 10% of normal during a probation period. These are the things you did wrong: link. Here's where you can see the activity and what happened: link. Here are the rules you need to pay attention to: link. The account will be monitored and your earnings percentage slowly increased as we see that these violations are rectified. We look forward to a continued relationship with <company name>".
...A far better approach.
If you are going to shut down someones entire revenue stream you need to have a humane and reasonable process to review the situation and seek resolution rather than hitting someone over the head with a sledge-hammer.
I don't know what will trigger this lawsuit. I do think that it is almost inevitable. They might even need to be broken into different verticals in order to make it all fair. I think they are playing a dangerous game. I think they are playing with fire.
The Google "do no evil" thing may have been a nice idea. However, as it pertains to AdWords/AdSense they are headed straight for evil-land if they keep on this path.
There's another topic: Google censorship. I think that, because they are a monopoly, they don't have the right to censor. They can't be in charge of what is and isn't appropriate on the web. Different issue.
Operation of UAV's is most definitely regulated by the FAA, and for good reason. Per FAA rules, the fellow in question needed to follow full-scale airframe and operator certification (UAV operator), carry appropriate insurance and observe airspace restrictions per the FAA. If you are interested search the FAA site and regs.
As far as him having checked for flights before launching: What a lame joke! I have flown in a full scale helicopter in that airspace, around the Statute of Liberty, etc.. The pilots are in constant communication and visually scan the airspace for potential danger. They can't and don't do whatever the heck they want.
I am one of those people who doesn't need a law to understand that something should not be done just 'cause you can. It is dumb, stupid, moronic and dangerous to fly an RC plane over, around, close to people, buildings, bridges and small farm animals. You could kill people. No law needed in order to understand the reasons this is so. But they are there for those who lack common sense.
This guy is a moron. Certifiable. Sorry, no other way to put it.
If you have never started a business and suffered the consequences of having hired the wrong employees you lack the perspective necessary in order to voice an opinion on this matter. From my perspective, having started several businesses, succeeded and failed, I see no flaw whatsoever in what Jason is saying.
The consequences of hiring the wrong people can be dire, particularly when you need them to perform. I had a director of sales who was instrumental in killing one of my businesses.
When times got tough he did not have the "killer instinct" Jason talks about. Sales were down. Times were tough. I relied on him to go turn over rocks and find sales. Long story short, he just didn't have it in him. I had hired the wrong person. Funny thing is that there was another candidate that was rougher around the edges but definitely had the drive. I chose the more "refined" candidate (in my eyes) and made a huge mistake.
Jason is right.
If you don't understand it's because you lack the context. My favorite Mark Twain saying applies here:
"A man holding a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way".
Hold THAT cat by the tail first. Then you'll have an opinion worth considering.
These people need to get into a LOT of trouble. This is not legal, and for good reason. I say this from the perspective of having designed, built and flown RC fixed-wing and helicopters for well over twenty years. As neat and sophisticated as they might look, these things are still toys.
They are not built to the same standards as real aircraft. Single failure modes abound and they are, in most cases, catastrophic.
I have seen model airplanes loose a horizontal stabilizer in flight for no apparent good reason. Or simply fall out of the sky like a brick when one of the cheap electronic parts inside fails. Figure out the kinetic energy of a 8 to 10 pound object travelling at 100+ miles per hour to understand the lethality potential.
The airspace he covered is flown by full-scale aircraft. Imagine being a tourist taking one of those NYC helicopter flights (done that) only to plummet to your death because some a-hole decided it was OK to take his $300 toy on a joy flight.
Beyond, that, imagine if this was, in fact, legal. Would you like to see 100 of these things flying without control around an airspace such as NYC? Bad idea.
They need to get into a LOT of trouble. This is definitely not something anyone should emulate or replicate. It will ruin the model aircraft hobby in the US forever.
And maybe it is this "arms race" issue that is at the core of the SEO problem. If you are a startup with SEO that just happens to intersect with that of a very large well-established organization you might as well not exist.
Maybe Google can fix this by splitting their search page into a top section of top SEO sites and a lower section for "the road less travelled".
Just thinking out loud here. I've seen neat sites with very useful and relevant content not show-up anywhere useful in a Goggle search.
Then there's the "evil" element. I'll call it inadvertent evil to be kind. If you've ever had the experience of having, for example, Google reject your site for the AdSense program with pretty-much a totalitarian approach to the issue you'll know exactly what I mean. I've had that happen and it was beyond frustrating. It took months to deal with it. No way whatsoever to engage with Google to figure out what was wrong. I've heard even worst stories from folks who had sites black listed by them.
If we, by extension, call Google a "totalitarian regime" that, without a doubt, has the power to decide what can succeed and fail on the web, I think that the issues created by such things as SEO algorithms are amplified.
I don't want to go to the "Google is evil" extreme --they are not-- but some aspects of their robotic approach to dealing with the massive tasks they undertake definitely have the potential to become auto-evil-ized.
Well, this is definitely worst than long sentence URLs. I can't imagine why (other than incompetence) a programmer would think that these URLs with ridiculously long parameter values are, shall we say, sensible.
Print these two lines in large type and post them on wall you can see every day:
Your focus becomes your reality.
Never get in your own way.
So: What do you want your reality to be? Focus on it. Figure out how to get there. Never give up.
And, don't get in your own way by becoming your own worst enemy and defeating yourself mentally before your competitors.
I've made a lot of money over the years and have also lot is all to the point of going bankrupt twice (as in, having to file bankruptcy, rinso, everything gone). Still, I would not change any of it. Not one bit. Either this is in your bloodstream or it isn't.
My experience was interesting and revealing. I had a bunch of domains (about 200) parked with GoDaddy in something called "cash parking". Not a money maker, but, what the heck. Once I realized that this was actually a service provided by Google I decided to look into cutting-out the middle man.
I looked into AdSense and found AdSense for Domains. Exactly the same service being offered by GoDaddy. I took all 200-some domains off GoDaddy, created an AdSense account and parked all of them with Google. They approved every single domain name and put ads on them. Great.
Two days later I get this email about fraudulent activity and the termination of my AdSense account. I appealed. No love. So, the termination was, effectively, forever.
Here's the irony of this story. The same 200 domains had been parked with GoDaddy for months without any issues. Serviced by Google. They even made a few bucks for all involved. The domains were not advertised in any way anywhere. I just parked them and went on with my business. This means that Google was responsible for sending traffic to these sites, every bit of it. About 50 of the domains were political in nature. Being that this was around election time my guess is that they got more traffic than usual, and, I guess, hits. I'll never know because the account was killed within two days of being formed with no data provided whatsoever.
So: Google sends traffic to the sites. The sites get clicks. They close my AdSense account. No appeal, no recourse, no human being to speak to. Bullshit!
Google needs to get sued in a major way to "reset" some of their behaviors. Why? Because they are a de-facto monopoly. Search is dominated by them. Video (YouTube) is dominated by them. Advertising (AdWords and AdSense) is dominated by them.
They do not provide for any intelligent way to deal with problems. They will tell you that you've done something wrong but will NOT provide proof, details nor an opportunity to rectify the problem. A likely scenario is that of someone just getting started who makes a few mistakes and needs to learn. Google does not provide for any of the above. They are judge, jury and executioner and a pretty mean one at that.
This fellow with the boat site probably deserved a slap on the hand for his site. He did no deserve to loose ALL OF HIS INCOME. They could have easily said something like:
"Your site-based per-click revenue is now 10% of normal during a probation period. These are the things you did wrong: link. Here's where you can see the activity and what happened: link. Here are the rules you need to pay attention to: link. The account will be monitored and your earnings percentage slowly increased as we see that these violations are rectified. We look forward to a continued relationship with <company name>".
...A far better approach.
If you are going to shut down someones entire revenue stream you need to have a humane and reasonable process to review the situation and seek resolution rather than hitting someone over the head with a sledge-hammer.
I don't know what will trigger this lawsuit. I do think that it is almost inevitable. They might even need to be broken into different verticals in order to make it all fair. I think they are playing a dangerous game. I think they are playing with fire.
The Google "do no evil" thing may have been a nice idea. However, as it pertains to AdWords/AdSense they are headed straight for evil-land if they keep on this path.
There's another topic: Google censorship. I think that, because they are a monopoly, they don't have the right to censor. They can't be in charge of what is and isn't appropriate on the web. Different issue.