Korean Fair Trade Commission: AdSense Policies Unfair
A common complaint among publishers is that the AdSense program policies are unfair; they allow Google to unilaterally cancel an account and keep all the earnings made by the publisher. The Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has now ruled in favor of these publishers. After studying the case for a year, the KFTC ruled Monday that Google must change these policies.
The KFTC began looking into this after a website, Humor University, had its account canceled and had about $26,000 taken away by Google. Humor University is now filing a lawsuit against Google Korea.
Here is an article about this from the Korean Herald.
The article has a quote from Humor University’s CEO Lee Jung-min:
“In the lawsuit, I’m considering seeking the unpaid ad revenue only, even though the reputation of our website might have been tainted because of the illegal click claims.
I find this kind of dubious. How would Google canceling the account effect the reputation of the website? Google doesn’t make public which websites have been canceled. If that information got out, it was the publisher’s own fault. If anything, taking AdSense ads off a site would increase its ability to monetize the site.
It will be interesting to see how Google responds to this. Will they try to fight it, or will they change the policies? And if they change the policies will it effect publishers worldwide, or just in Korea?
Y Joshua Said,
June 7, 2007 @ 10:21 am
Google Adsense has also cheated me. It’s not my fault somebody clicked on my website ads on purpose or continuously? Why must I lose all the money I earned as well. This is so unfair. Maybe google must cancel adsense for content since 20% of people cheat! And then just leave adsense for search engine results. But no… The money is too good for Google!