How does Google get away with not paying?

by 19 replies
22
All these horror stories of people who've gotten their accounts banned has left me wondering how Google legally gets away with not paying them their final check. Granted if you were blatantly breaking their rules they shouldn't have to pay you but they should have to give you a description of what it exactly was you were doing. From what I hear this doesn't happen.

Also a "terms of service" does not hold complete and total legal power. I know this from when I was threatened to be sued by a huge well known website until they realized their terms of service was garbage. You can't just say in your terms of service "We hold the right to terminate any account we see fit" basically as Google does and expect it to legally hold up. Especially if a large sum of money is owed and the offense that caused the money not to be paid is minor or never explained.

So my question is how does Google get away with it? How does Google never get sued for this from legitimate sites that were banned for no good reason? And has anyone fought Google legally over this?
#search engine optimization #google #paying
  • You signed a contract with them. You violated the terms of the contract so you don't get paid.

    Google isn't "getting away" with anything. These are the terms of the agreement you entered with them.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Sure but when they don't explain what it is you did to violate their terms, then that is not legal. A company can't just say "you violated our contract" and thats it. Their must be detailed reasons. Just because Google holds a lot of the cards doesn't make them god. You made them money and now they've decided not to pay you for it. Thats the key here you still MADE THEM MONEY. That should be emphasized. Yes if its click bombing, sure they give their advertisers their money back but if its something like your ad was misplaced or no privacy policy, well Google is still charging advertisers for those clicks. You still made them money and they decided not to pay you.

      Like I said a terms of service is not an end all be all. I know this from a 1st hand experience and that didn't involve me getting paid money which would have been even worse for the website I had dealings with.
      • [1] reply
  • Hi dp40oz,

    Google doesn't want to reveal all details of your violation because they know that some unscrupulous operators would use that knowledge to game the system.

    It would also tend to define a bold line of what is acceptable. You might ask why would Google see that as a bad thing? Google realized early on that when they make it very clear where the minimum expectations fall that a large number of webmasters would stop putting effort into improving their website once they reach that minimum expectation.

    The problem with that is that it tends to lower the overall effort many webmasters will put into their websites, creating a standard based on the lowest common denominator. Google made a decision years ago to avoid that issue by making specific details of where they draw the line a bit ambiguous so as to encourage webmasters to go the extra mile to be on the safe side. It is a strategy that has worked well to encourage many webmasters to put extra effort into building higher quality websites.

    Lets face it, Google doesn't want to encourage content publishers to build the absolute minimally acceptable websites and end up with network of the highest number of the lowest quality websites to serve their ads.
  • You did not read the legal binding contract:

    Most people do not read each and every bit of TOS, guidelines, etc.

    Huh. Funny thing. That last line I quoted makes it clear that if google does not
    get paid, then you don't get paid. That's really covering all bases.

    Paul
    • [1] reply
    • I still think if any legal pressure was put on them they would eventually have to disclose to webmasters why the TOS was broken. I think thats my biggest issue. Ive never heard of a contract or a TOS where you can make a business money and they can decide whether they will pay you or not, and if they decide not to they don't need to give you any reason for it. It just seems a bit sketchy.
      • [3] replies
  • Because google is god.. and nobody can question god..
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      Google is far from being God.

      If you don't believe me look up , & the history they have with Google.

      Baidu owns 75% of the search market in China. A couple of years ago Google thought they would take over China like every other country for search, they thought wrong, China kicked their a$$ out of the country.

      So, Google setup shop in Japan trying to route China traffic, another failure at attempting to bully their competition.

      BTW, I did the research a couple of years ago while all this was happening & in the news.

      I bought into back before Google got booted from China, my stock is up (not a typo).

      Baidu owns the China search market, China is 20% of the worlds population.
      • [1] reply
  • I'm having de ja vu.
  • I got banned by Google adwords and i've asked them severally why iwas banned but they've refused to get let the cat out of the bag. Now if i kiss google's butt like someone suggested. how will i know i won't commit the same offense because i don't know what it is.







  • Participating in Google's AdSense program is completely voluntary. They pay you, you don't pay them.

    Google's AdSense TOS is freely available and completely understandable. And Google has a "no exceptions, no excuses" policy when it comes to TOS violations.

    If you sign up for AdSense with the idea that you are going to 'game the system' in anyway, you will lose. Like thousands of others before you.

    Play the game by their rules and you win.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
Join the discussion

Next Topics on Trending Feed

  • 22

    How does Google get away with not paying?

    All these horror stories of people who've gotten their accounts banned has left me wondering how Google legally gets away with not paying them their final check. Granted if you were blatantly breaking their rules they shouldn't have to pay you but they should have to give you a description of what it exactly was you were doing. From what I hear this doesn't happen. Also a "terms of service" does not hold complete and total legal power. I know this from when I was threatened to be sued by a huge well known website until they realized their terms of service was garbage. You can't just say in your terms of service "We hold the right to terminate any account we see fit" basically as Google does and expect it to legally hold up. Especially if a large sum of money is owed and the offense that caused the money not to be paid is minor or never explained.