Google Adsense...more like Google Scamsense

Bamboozled.

Its the name of a movie, an onomatopoeia, and also what happened to the writers of the blog.

As most of you probably knew, for the past 7 weeks or so, we have had ads for dumb companies on the side of the blog, which we were told we were going to be "paid" for when people looked at/clicked on the ads.

The first sign that something was wrong was with the process to sign up for this nonsense. It was a long process, one where you needed to enter a four digit PIN number in order to receive your money. They said this number would be sent in the mail in 2 weeks. However, on that page, it said if the number didn't arrive, you could request another after 4 weeks. The United States Postal Service has been around since 1775 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usps). 236 years. After all that time, they've gotten pretty good at the routine of taking a piece of paper (or cardstock) and transporting it from one place to another. So the question is, why was Google assuming that we wouldn't get this piece of mail? The tools never sent it to me is my prognosis. However, being the good natured individual that I am, I naturally let this pass and re-ordered the PIN number. Unfortunately, the other day I received the following email from Google saying that we were the ones cheating...

Hello,

After reviewing our records, we've determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due to invalid activity, we've found it necessary to disable your AdSense account. Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers.

Please understand that we need to take such steps to maintain the effectiveness of Google's advertising system, particularly the advertiser-publisher relationship. We understand the inconvenience that this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions or concerns about the actions we've taken, how you can appeal this decision, or invalid activity in general, you can find more information by visiting http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Yes, I did appeal. In it, I had a few scathing words, and called them cheaters and liars. They have yet to respond. After doing a bit of internet research, (on a Yahoo search engine...) I found numerous reports of other people being cheated out of their hard-earned money as well, right at the time we did, when were about to hit a hundred dollars in earnings. Additionally, the advertisers are also cheated out of their money in multiple cases, and the supposed refund to them is never enacted.

I'm writing this email in order to start a boycott of Google in all ways. This is the last time I will use Google Chrome to browse the internet. Go ahead, call shenanigans. I will use Yahoo search from now on. Those are the only viable options I have of boycotting, but please join me in this. We need to stick it to the G-man. This is not a joke, though it is funny.

Here are some more articles about this scam...

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/united_states/article703023.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=520875

<3's
James Crockett Harris III

P.S. I hate Google.