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Comment by kels | Hacker News Reader

The fact that it has to be a covered by news really sucks.

I ran a website that got our AdSense account shut down for what Google claimed was invalid clicks. I never clicked on our ads and we made little money from AdSense (we had other ad networks). Since my personal Gmail account was used as a backup email my personal account's AdSense account was also banned. They won't reinstate either account or give any more details.

I don't use any Google Cloud services because I'm afraid that all of my accounts would get shut down for any reason and I would lose all of that data.

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AdSense is a giant hypocrisy, they tell you you can't have ads in the first part of the screen on mobile, but you look at Google search results and they so exactly that.

Then, there is a set of guidelines you have to comply, which is great, except it says this "Pages generated to funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site" and also says you can't copy content from other sites, they are basically describing Google search page.

who watches the watchmen?

They obviously provide a good service with Google search, that's out of discussion.

Search is the one you should really stop using when possible. I've found DuckDuckGo's general search to be only okay, but bang patterns are very helpful since I usually want to search stack overflow or another site directly anyhow.

Google search quality has dropped drastically. Any attempt to look up a technical issue results in StackOverflow inconsistently in the top 5, with maybe 20 different shitty mirror sites.

Google has lost their magic. I'm actively migrating away from their services at this point.

> Google search quality has dropped drastically. Any attempt to look up a technical issue results in StackOverflow inconsistently in the top 5, with maybe 20 different shitty mirror sites.

Are you logged in? Maybe their learnt wrong things about you? (For me swiftkey has that problem, had to switch away from it as the more it learnt, the worse the suggestions would become)

Search is the one thing I still need from google. Technical things result in 50% stackoverflow and 50% blog posts or forum posts of people discussing the same problem. For things with multiple meanings google usually gets the right one. I'd love to use DDG, but whenever I try it, I end up having to use bangs to get what I want.

Yep, same has happened to me. Right before I was going to get my first payout of $100 or so, I got my AdSense account killed for invalid click activity. I never intentionally clicked, and the one time I accidentally did I reported it to them (which is what they said to do in the event of an accidental click). I turned over information, offered them server logs, etc., but never got anything more than stock replies that my request for reconsideration was denied and they wouldn't tell me anything more detailed.

That happened a number of years ago and I haven't had them kill any of my other accounts for any reason, but it remains a concern and I certainly don't trust them.

The hard math with ads is that Google keeps perhaps 30%, and from that they pay themselves and their costs. So there's not very much customer service you can offer on accounts that earn them $100 to $300/year. And there really is an enormous amount of real fraud.

That's not how it works, though. In business, you always factor in the cost of everyone, across the board. Ten minutes on the phone with technical support with any small software company is certainly worth more than the paltry $20 license you paid for.

Just like hotels factor in the price and rate of stolen towels when pricing their rooms for everyone, Google, like any other business, makes money from some of te customers and loses money on others. We don't get to pick only the winning horses. Your grocery store doesn't ban you because you dropped a dozen eggs and then left with a 10¢ stick of gum - they price it in.

Being good at business is, in large part, only serving profitable customers. There is no legal right to purchase services from SAAS companies that said company doesn't care to provide.

>Being good at business is, in large part, only serving profitable customers.

I strongly disagree with that notion. Even if you know in advance who will be profitable, you often gain more customers by servicing all customers (or at least the vast majority).

Two examples:

1. A lot of internet companies are built on servicing everyone, and extracting money from a tiny subset (github is one example).

2. If one in every thousand customers costs me more in support than they pay, that's one thing. But becoming known for good support will be more profitable than becoming known for kicking customers who ask too many questions.

We find it to be very good business to provide amazing customer service to all users, free or paid. It results in better word of mouth advertising. It's so appreciated by users that they will evangelize for your service, assuming it's something they use regularly.

The cost for support is low too, relatively speaking. Obviously not all businesses have enough margin to consider this, some support is more expensive than others etc.

Oh it's perfectly fine to only have certain customers.

The problem is when you accept customers and then don't provide proper service.

They could require $1k or $10k per month minimum volume. But they don't. They accept everyone and then stonewall at random, sometimes even when people are high-volume.

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