An Open Letter to Google

gr8 article!
these random acts of unkindness are a regularity by google. A similar case took place with me and they disabled my account as well(why? i have no clue). Did i reply back? Who would waste the time? I took it up blogger was insisting on each of its page.

Ha Ha Ha!

Excellent reply buddy - jeez - I cant believe they wrote such a mail... the freaks! Welcome to modernage microsoft hehe!

was there another code generated response, in response ? !!

No response so far. Interestingly enough, I don't "pimp" my ads, or draw undue attention to them. Occasionally at the end of a review post I ask visitors, if they found the reviews helpful, to make their Amazon purchases through the site or click on a ad to support the site, in the interest of defraying costs, but most of my efforts are around encouraging Amazon purchases, not Adwords.

As I mentioned in the article and in the comments back on Blogcritics, the miniscule trickle of revenue that Adwords brings in is largely irrelevant. Given the traffic levels that most blogs receive, and given that Google draws the line at $100 worth of click-thrus as the minimum level to reach to actually receive payment, the vast majority of blogs that participate in the Adwords program are essentially giving Google free ad space, unless they reach that magic $100 level.

At a 2% click-thru rate and an average of about $0.4 per click, a site with 5,000 visitors annually would generate about $4....Thus Google does not matter, not to me and it probably, bluntly shouldn't matter to 90% of the Blogosphere, which sits there and relentlessly provides Google with essentially "free" ad space that they will, in all probability, never have to pay out for.

Google gets an terrific aggregate gain from the collectivity of sites that make up blogsphere, but rarely has to pay out any ad revenues...They could easily pay out micro-sums through Paypal or another mechanism, but that would probably make the blog-side of Adwords a money-loser. As it stands, they are dependent on all of those blogs that will never hit the threshold of payment.

Personally I think the blogosphere should stop renting out their blogspace for nothing.

I loved reading your reply to Google cos its funny.
Though I think that Google's actions or antics have not yet reached a stage where they might be tarred with the title of the "next Microsoft".

As for
"Respectfully, I don't tell you guys what to put on your site, you shouldn't be telling me what I can put on mine."

Respectfully - you don't pay them directly so you are in no position to tell them what to put on their site. They do pay you though (however miniscule the amount may be) and thus you agreed to _their_ terms and conditions.

Point taken and correct, I probably am in technical violation, at least from the perspective of whatever automated spider they have checking the site. The text they are citing as in violation doesn't directly reference the Google Ads - its asking for support for the site generically and/or encouraging visitors to place their Amazon orders. I think I have one reference that says "click on the ads". The degree of the violation is moumentally low and wholly unintentional, which was one reason they raised my ire.

I don't expect Google to care one way or another but on a personal level I found that it was, for me, an irritant I see no need to put up with, particularly when you sit down and do the calculations. Unless you are one of those sites pulling in 100,000 visitors a year, it is doubtful the Google ads will ever payoff in a commercial sense. I run a book review site, not Instapundit, the traffic levels aren't ever going to hit a level that makes that fiscally worthwhile.

And lastly, it gives me a nice feeling of joyful satisfaction to tell them to bugger off...it's quite refreshing.

Deano: Very interesting article. I was just thinking of putting Google adsense on my website (which, ofcourse, not many visit). Thanks to your reasoned commentary about how google manages to grab Adspace for free, I would probably never want them to eat into my webspace!!!!!!

I think we need a statistical estimate of how much money google manages to make through this program. The result would be very interesting to know about.

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