Of course; the laws are largely written by corporations for the benefit of corporations. That makes it legal, but it doesn’t make it right.
Except that doesn’t appear to be practical, which makes them de facto censors.
You, not I am the one arguing that fairness doesn’t matter. If fairness doens’t matter then it doesn’t matter if they are “equivalent” or not. If fairness doesn’t matter then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t just send in the government to make Google employees all dress in plaid and sing “We Are The Champions” on You Tube. It wouldn’t make sense to do that - but according to you, it doesn’t matter if it makes sense.
They aren’t because they aren’t actually enforcing their rules most of the time.
Because they’ve set themselves up as internet gatekeepers. When you grab the power, you get the responsibility with it.
But that’s ridiculous. Ask any website owner, hosting your own ads is the most profitable way to go. Google AdSense is a stopgap measure until you get big enough to do that. I’d argue that TVTropes is big enough to do that if they really wanted to go for it. Obviously that’s not going to happen with a server bill looming. But you can bet your ass they’ll be looking into now.
And actually, an Amazon Affiliate link can be more profitable than Google AdSense if enough stuff is bought in a month. Google is not the only game in town, and people arguing that it is in this thread are woefully misinformed.
If Google’s services are really so inadequate, it shouldn’t be difficult for others to step in fill the void being left.
This is really hysterical nonsense. 10 years ago no one needed Google’s ad revenue in order to maintain a web site. 20 years ago no one needed a web site in Oder to exercise free
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Google Doesn’t control who stays on the web. People whomwqnt certain information are free to support the providers of such information, as has always been the case in every medium of communication.
And fuck it allmwhether Google “selectively enforces” it’s contract. That’s their right. Google is merely a service. It doenlsnt control access to the Internet. You could make unreasonable case that Cox, Comcast, and Verizon should be considered common carriers, but not Google’s advertising services.
I have trouble with the argument that Google can kill any website they choose by pulling advertising for the simple fact that webmasters voluntarily and without duress bring AdSense on in the first place. If Google can kill a website by denying them use of AdSense, I can’t see it as anything but the webmaster’s fault for relying wholly on Google for revenue and not scrupulously adhering to their policies, however crazy they may be.
The problem is solely the question of whether Google as middle-men are introducing terms to the contract or enforcing those terms in a way the advertising businesses would not have done themselves, and only because the nature of their business makes it a natural monopoly. This does not make your warped “fair play” anywhere near justified. So please, stop saying stupid things, you’re making us look bad.
You have to be kidding. When a company grabs as much market share as Google’s Adsense has, they suck most of the oxygen from the environment, making it VERY difficult to compete, even if the monopoly is doing a horrible job and screwing customers over left and right. (Here’s a little thought for you: the Internet was not created by Bell Labs, in fact, they hated it when it first came out. Why? Cause any change for a monopolist is seen as destructive … they rule the roost, they are against changes in the roost. Monopolists are hindrances on the marketplace, REAL free market advocates despise them.)
In any event, and to fight ignorance, there ARE alternatives to Adsense. Here’s a link to what seems to be a very good article about them aimed at small publishers:
But please note this caveat appearing at the beginning of the article:
I’ll bet their market share is pretty damn close to being monopolistic. Just because a monopoly is not mandated by law, it does not mean the monopoly does not exist.
According to thisrecent article, Google commands 69% of the online ad market. That’s big, but it’s not really quite a monopoly yet, is it?
If it is an effective monopoly, then maybe it’s a good thing that Google are letting go of important pieces of the market like TV Tropes - presumably some other ad aggregator can then pick up and specialise to that section of the market. Otherwise, what’s the solution?
Force them to establish an plainly stated set of rules that outline what is and isn’t allowed, and enforce them fairly, instead of this wink-wink nudge-nudge business. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask. Clients should be entitled to know the terms of their contract when they sign up.
Most of that already happens. The only bit in question is the even-handedness of enforcement, but we don’t seem to have established what their metric is for policy compliance, or if they just rely on snitches, or what. Without knowing the variables, a mechanistically-applied system could be quite easy to misinterpret as being inconsistent.
The solution is for people to complain on message boards and blogs. If Google gets bad PR among the technorati, they might decide to change. Google is not just an advertising agency, it is also a very, very valuable brand that the company will work to protect.
Ugh. I knew I should have left the “evil” comments out of this. Y’all should know by now that my definition of evil is looking out for yourselves at the expense of others. Google has enough money that they could do what a moral human would do: tell the person what they are doing wrong, and give them adequate time to deal with the situation. Instead, they pull the ads, and give the site owner no information on what he is doing wrong. And why? The owner asked: because they only have 5 million page views per month, which is small change for Google.
My reason for my definition of evil is simple. If everyone were to just look out for themselves, we’d have a very amoral society, unless you actually believe Rand. Said society leads to revolution.
That the rules Google makes are stupid is just icing on the cake. That they don’t enforce them evenly, as evidenced by this site having the same problems, was just a little bit more to make me have to say something.
Finally, I have to admit I was just peeved in the first place. I’m sure all of y’all wouldn’t say “Well, that’s what happens” if I were to go to Google right now and report us and get our Google ad revenue taken away (which, according to the policy and precedent would happen.) And so I detest that you would say “Them’s the breaks” as if it’s no big deal.
I made this thread for the people who care about the site. If you think it’s no big deal, why come into the thread at all?
The good news is that the stuff they are doing to try to fix this may actually make for a stronger site. This doesn’t mean, however, that I believe that what Google did was right. As far as I’m concerned, it was just another example of a big company bullying a smaller company because they can. Or, at the very least, bureaucracy going overboard.
That said, I’m more mad at the person who most likely reported them.
They don’t have to be a monopoly. All they have to do is mislead the site by letting them earn higher and higher rates until they can’t get anywhere near the same deal from anyone else (at least, in the short term) and then cut them off without warning. In fact, that’s the only reason FastEddie is acquiescing at all–his only other choice is to shut down most of the site.
For example, they ran Amazon ads for about a week, and got enough money to run 11 minutes worth of the site. They said that, in a month, they’d get at most what Google would make in a day.
I’m probably guilty of not knowing the full details of what happened in this case (I’m afraid I just didn’t have time to trawl through dozens of pages of angst to pick out the pertinent facts - I did get to the bit where they started discussing the details of what had happened though).
That’s not my personal definition of evil. IMO, it’s not unreasonable to expect the webmaster to take responsibility for checking that the site is compliant with policy that has been made clear in advance. Webmasters are not the customer in this relationship - they’re the supplier (of ad space on web pages).
I don’t really believe Google is doing that - just looking out for themselves. I believe they’re catering for the perceived demands of the ad market they’re serving. Their paying customers - if the paying customers don’t like it, they won’t hand-hold the process of remedy - they’ll vote with their wallets.
Are they? What’s stupid about them?
If this really is the case, then I agree, it’s pretty poor. Have we actually established that the rules really are being enforced unevenly?
It’s easy to have an impression of the general level of profanity on this site vs that, but that impression could be wrong.
Do we know how it’s measured, and whether the other sites that seem to be getting away with it aren’t just below the radar?
I’m not sure that’s what I meant by ‘them’s the breaks’ I have a website of my own and I use AdSense on it. I am acutely aware of the requirements imposed by the scheme - it just seems odd to me that people can be surprised when they fall foul of the policies, which regardless of whether they’re draconian, are abundantly clear.
Because this is a message board, where people discuss their diverse viewpoints. My viewpoint is based on first-hand experience of Google Adsense, and my experience happens to have been entirely positive. I think this thread needs the balance, frankly.
