Man who originally won small claim against Google loses appeal.
Aaron Greenspan won a small claims court case against Google earlier this year. Google had canceled his Adsense account without providing a reason. The judge ruled that it can’t cancel accounts for any reason at all, and awarded Greenspan $761. Greenspan wrote an article for Huffington Post detailing the matter, which gained national attention. Google and appealed the case, which it won.
Although Greenspan tries to come across as the white knight in a follow up story on Huffington Post, he should be just as ashamed of his actions as Google should be for not telling him why his account was canceled in the first place.
Basically, Greenspan cheated. He set up a web page with Google Adsense that contained no content other than the links. Well, there was a critical piece of content above the links: text that read “Pick a link”. So he violated two terms.
Greenspan tries to get across that Google has a second program just for domains that allows ads to be shown without content and that it isn’t fair. (Note that these parked pages never say “Pick a Link”.) But at any time Greenspan could have joined that program through a Google partner (which he later did).
To be clear, Google probably should have just told this guy why his account was canceled in the first place: cheating. I agree that Google tends to take actions that drastically affect people without fully justifying them. But the company doesn’t need to justify itself to cheaters.
bernard says
Isn’t it the same guy who claimed to be somehow the father of Facebook?
He seems better as a universal victim than an entrepreneur.
jp says
How much money do you think google spent on this case just to be right over $761?
Andrew Allemann says
JP – I think because of the publicity Google had to fight the case. Otherwise everyone would start taking Google to small claims court.
balonkey says
“But the company doesn’t need to justify itself to cheaters.”
OFFICER: ‘You’re under arrest. We’re going to put you away for a long time.’
ACCUSED: ‘What’s the charge?’
OFFICER: Shut up. ‘We don’t have to justify ourselves to criminals.’
Andrew Allemann says
@balonkey – I think he was well aware of what he did wrong.
zygrax.com says
…so cheaters, be WARNED!
Bihar says
Made of adsense sites are notorious for these things anyway, poor content etc.