Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Goodbye Google AdSense!

Was going to just post this on Facebook, but turned into a bit bigger rant than expected. So here's the reason I cancelled my Google AdSense account:

Upon doing a bit of research after getting yet another "Get $100 free ad credit" offer code card from Google Adsense, I decided to cancel my Adsense account and de-monetize my YouTube videos.  Never mind that the catch is that you have to spend $25.00 to use the code on the card, thus rendering the credits actually being $25.00 of real money for $100.00 of ad credit, and thus effectively paying Google for the privilege to spam your website and videos with Adsense ads. Quite simply, after having Adsense for a couple years, it's only generated $0.99, of which even that I couldn't receive because it's below the threshold that they would pay out to a canceled account.  That basically amounted to about 2 or 3 years that Google has gotten who knows how many hundreds of thousands of free ads posted that may have attributed in some way to Google's potential $2.3 billion earned (or $9.7 billion annualized) that amounts to 28% of Google's total revenue through Google AdSense (see the Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense).

So yep, I'm not going to spam people on my blog or on my YouTube feed with ads in so-called monetization that does very little to actually provide what is promised.  Especially troubling is that there are stories about how Google had disabled Adsense accounts before they had to pay out those accounts that finally made it to $100.00.  Many of these people had waited out months, even years, to generate this amount of money after allowing the spamming of hundreds of thousands of ads on their websites or blogs.  And what it their reward?  To have Google accuse them of fraud, claiming in an email that, after review, these accounts had certain questionable activities, but never specifies exactly what.  Sure, there is a process of appeal, but a good portion of those people that try get stonewalled.  It would seem Google banks on them figuring it too much a bother to take legal action upon Google for this scam. The legal fees alone would cost more than the actual money that would be fought for.  What fairness would there be to support this sort of thing or expect that I would be an exception to the rule?  Therefore, Google can scam its billions of dollars through the program without me.

As for evidence of this scam, you don't have to take my word that it goes on.  Not only can you check the Wiki link provided, but you can, in all irony, Google it!

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