Google recaptures $761 from Facebook nemesis After it was successfully sued in small claims court by a man who says he invented Facebook, Google has appealed the decision, returned to court, and persuaded a judge to return its $761. In March, famous Facebook nemesis Aaron Greenspan sued Google in a North California court, claiming that Google terminated his AdSense …
Selective enforcement of contract terms or license terms is the norm. It's even a negotiation tactic in some instances. Microsoft doesn't sue everyone who installs their licensed copies of Windows plus one. A parts vendor doesn't send a good repeat customer to collections for paying late once or twice out of a hundred invoices. A sports star can start at the league minimum on a multi-year contract and suddenly after a breakout season have that contract voided and have a higher-paying contract signed. None of these scenarios mean that if you violate the terms of your agreement that action can't be taken against you. Contracts are not statutes, and nothing guarantees you equal treatment in line with what the next guy gets.
In reading this article it appears that Google was going to just let it go until it get angry again over something that the plaintiff was doing. This type of activity is an abuse of our court system and google should of let it go and not use our courts to make themselves feel better.
The moral of the story ladies and gents is don't trust large corporate monopolies with too much because in the end you'll burn for it. Our company stopped using google checkout a little bit ago because Google was trying to dictate to us how they wanted their logos to appear on our sites. It wasn't good enough that we had their logo up (with no incentive for us) backlinked to them, nah they wanted special "larger" logos on your sites, ones that wouldn't of complimented ours at all.
We later re-considered and continued to use the service but we no longer give them free advertisements:)
As much as I hate to say this, if this article is accurate, I have to side with Google here. This bloke admitted he violated the terms of service, therefore Google had every right to terminate his account. In fact, they should go after him for filing a frivolous lawsuit and wasting their (and the taxpayers') time and money.
Yuck, defending Google. I feel so dirty now. But hey, even a megalomaniac can be (legally) right every now and then.
If you want to earn money from Adsense, you have to play by the rules. End of story. If one of those rules is no payouts under $100, that's the way it is.
And if one of the rules is that you can be terminated on suspicion of click fraud, and that the balance of terminated accounts is not payable, that's the way it is too.
What amazes me is that the original judge could even contemplate the case.
Paris because she's as clever as the legal system is today.
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