3 Staff Laid Off
This is akin to banning mechanics because they didn't invent cars.
We, Nimble Nerds, in Sydney Australia, spent 7 years building a solid strategy around Google Ads, and in the last year spent about $15,000.
We had just hired new staff and were starting to go exponential with our customer intake. This rule absolutely levelled us.
I stopped being able to support many technicians, and other associates fell by the wayside also due to the massive loss of turnover, like our third party marketing team and overseas content writers.
I called Google to ask about it, explaining that as an on-site support company we, for example, help grandmas to connect their TVs to their wifi. This isn't third party tech support, this is a networking service. After spending thousands of dolars with them, all I got was a first level support provider telling me to remove all references to computer support, services, repairs etc from our site and then we can advertise. When I then asked what would we be advertising then, all I got was a repeat of the demands in a more aggressive tone.
I guess the lesson is don't bank on Google..and utilise other channels and SEO also.
We're a team of certified engineers, but are not given the ability to prove ourselves.
The worst part is that our competitors are intentionally and actively thwarting the Google ads policy, so they're still getting to advertise for the searches, when we can't. This is against the law. I've reported it to our country's consumer commission but haven't heard back in months.