Google as depicted in Crunc…” width=”250″ height=”99″ />

Image via CrunchBase

I’m just going to make this quick - Chris Brogan reported(When Google Owns You) that google had shut down the who account of a Nick Saber, just an average guy, for no apparent reason. Here’s what Chris posted:

Nick Saber isn’t happy now. Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find out that he couldn’t get into his Gmail account. Further, he couldn’t get into anything that Google made (beside search) where his account credentials once worked. When attempting to log in, Nick got a single line message:

Sorry, your account has been disabled. [?]

That’s it.

Nick sent a message or three to Google for support. He got back this:

Thank you for your report. We’ve completed our investigation. Because our investigation was inconclusive, we are unable to return your account at this time. At Google we take the privacy and security of our users very seriously. For this reason, we’re unable to reveal any further information about this account.

And that’s it.

That’s just an excerpt. The question posted was are we giving google too much power by relying in the arm of google too much? Does google control our lives? What would happen tomorrow if you couldn’t login to Gmail, or similar?

These are all troubling issues, remember once upon a time when Google’s slogan was ‘Do no Evil?’ What the hell ever happened to that? It’s been a scenario in the bible, and philosophical circles for ages: With power and / or money comes corruption (not always but quite often…).

It seems Google has free reign to run unchecked and do just about whatever they want to.

WHY I’M PISSED: Today I found out that my adsense account had been shut down. Apparently someone thought it would be funny to click on a bunch of my links, and raise my daily revenue. Do they get punished? Nope, just me. I’m sure I’m not the only person having issues like this…

I was about to cash out my adsense for the very first time too.. I had like $90 before the 97 fraudulent clicks… Yes, I did submit an appeal, but from the way google seems to be acting lately, I doubt I’ll even get a response. Nick eventually did get his account back, you can read about the reply he got from google here.

On another note, apparently google can make their own rules when it comes to ads served on google UK. They apparently are serving a large interactive ad in their sponsored section see the pic below.

I found this via Google Blogoscoped. adwords.blogspot.com’);”>Google’s stance has always been that google won’t use any ads that adwords users can’t access in their user panel. Apparently Google’s new stance is “go F*** yourself, we can do whatever we want <hwa hwa hwa>…” Blogoscoped also pointed out that this isn’t the first time they’ve proved themselves wrong. You can view the search your self: Secured Loans.

In closing, I’d like to say that I’m moving to another email provider, and closing down ALL my google accounts once and for all.  Shutting down my adsense account was uncalled for, especially since I went to their help forum to report the suspicious activity 3 days before it was shut down. Perhaps people should be notified and given a chance to rebuttal. Perhaps googlers should be innocent until proven guilty…eh?

What’s your take? Google Evil or Nay? Would you join a Boycott if there were one?

Here are some related posts:

• Guy gets locked out of all Google apps
• Google Can & Will Shut Off Your Account Without Warning
• The Downside of Relying on Google for Everything [Google]
• When Google Owns You