Does Google React Vindictively to Criticism?

Published on October 14th, 2011 by Jeremy Chatfield

Is threatening a user community that have been active supporters, the smartest thing for Google to do?

In late 2008, I set up AdWordsHelpExperts.com (AWHE) with a group of other Top Contributors to the AdWords Help Forum. It is referenced by Google, in the Google sponsored and managed AdWords Help Forum, as a resource. I’ve now had a letter from Google requesting we abandon the domain name and threatening action against my agency if we don’t do so – and I suspect that it’s connected to a critical comment I made in a public forum.

Here’s what has happened, and I’d be interested to hear what you might think. Is this just strange coincidence or are some staff members at Google both arrogant and vindictive or is there another explanation that I’ve missed out?

History Of The AdWords Help Experts Website

I’d been involved with the AdWords Help Forum since about 2004, and made something like 2,000 or 3,000 posts – and I found that I had a real problem with the forum. It had no way to attach screenshots, and a lot of repetitious problems were much more easily solved with an article that embedded graphics… So I proposed that the Top Contributors at that point should join forces and make a website, so we could create really helpful articles, and direct users to them. Save time writing repeat responses, and show users exactly which link to click, etc.

We didn’t set it up to make a profit. We don’t run adverts on it. It’s cost my business about $1.500 in hosting fees over the years, and is deliberately set up to be very-low-level-promotional and very information rich. We (between us, all the top contributors that post there) do get a business enquiry about every month or so – there’s about a half dozen of us that have been involved; most of the enquiries are for troubleshooting small accounts. So it’s not a major source of leads for any of us. The site is an extension of the community-minded spirit that had us contributing in the AdWords Help Forum in the first place.

Conflict With Google

Around 2009 I began to be really concerned by the way the user to user AdWords Help Forum was being used by Google. I was one of the volunteer contributors, unrecompensed, getting very few business leads (and not minding that, at all – it was never about getting new clients) – posting on the forum to help others and learn about the strange edge cases of Google, and coming up with interesting business problems to tackle. These volunteers were now being asked to deal with a flood of distressed messages to the forum, as Google stopped providing any service at all to small accounts. Around that point, if you had a problem of certain types (credit card payment failures, claimed unexpected suspensions, indefinitely long editorial reviews and slow low budgets), you were sent on a dreadful trail around more or less useless resources until you realised that at every turn, Google was sending you to a forum for other advertisers to offer advice. We got a lot of upset business owners and doubtless some fraudulent users, too, trying it on… but mostly we seemed to deal with some people who had real gripes about being unable to access any support staff that could help solve a problem with the main way they brought customers to their business.

I’ve made clear my opposition to this “policy”, in the AdWords Help Forum and on this blog. I even organised a “strike” by the volunteers to stop posting in the Help Forum until Google did something about the flood of postings from users that were impossible for another advertiser to usefully help. When you need AdWords account access to understand the problem, another user can’t offer anything more than fatuous platitudes in a user to user forum. Community minded active posters tend to come from a position where they want to help, not just say, “yeah, I feel your pain”.

Nothing, in all that time, caused a ripple of concern from Google staffers about our using AdWordsHelpExperts.com. It’s still referenced, today, in the AdWords Help Forum.

Today (2010-11-13)

Yesterday, a Google staffer accidentally publicly posted a rant on Google Plus. A really interesting and well thought through rant, with lots of interesting details. My attention was drawn to it by an excellent programmer I know, and it came up in various other forums, too.

I commented on a reposting of that rant, specifically about the commentary on Google’s arrogance. I think that shutting off access to support for small business AdWords accounts and sending those users to a public forum was an act of corporate arrogance. I said so in the comment.

And I pointed to another area where I think Google has failed users through failing to think through what users do – the appalling identity mess surrounding Google Plus, Google Apps and AdWords. I need three identities across two browsers to use Google Apps, AdWords and my original Analytics identity, because of the way that Google has messed up Apps users identities and the simplistic username and password authentication from 2004-2010 that gave me serious concerns about AdWords access (I use private email addresses to login to AdWords, not addresses used in public forums, to make account guessing harder, so I need at least two accounts, in normal cases, but used to be able to have both open in one browser).

I’d like to suggest that that’s arrogance, too – ignoring a paying user base, and making it more difficult for them, without a real personal explanation or apology? Isn’t that the action of an arrogant business? You might disagree – and I’d love to hear why you think paying users should have their services made more difficult to use, so that free users can have a new service. I may have a limited imagination or too narrow a vocabulary, so go ahead, and inform me.

There’s an old article about that Google Apps/Plus (One) Identity Mess, on this blog, too. It’s months old – July. Dead history on the web.

However… this one critical comment that I make is on a highly read page, distributed to a huge audience and attracting serious attention. Not like this small, rarely updated blog.

Within about 8 hours of that comment, I get an email from Google telling me to take down AdWordsHelpExperts.com:

I’ll gladly admit that I don’t participate in the forum any more, or even the AWHE web site. I found 2009 to be a bruising, time consuming and deeply unpleasant experience for a volunteer. I get a sick feeling in my stomach just thinking about going there and what it was like for month after month.

Will I take the site down? Yes. I have better things to do in my life than argue about this. My already weakened respect for Google has crunched down another notch, though.

Questions, questions

Is this another example of Google shooting itself in the foot with customer and top contributor relations?

Has Google now made it clear that external criticism is not permissible, or is this official and officious email just coincidence?

Wouldn’t an approach through the continuing Top Contributors to ask them to rename the domain, have been less confrontational?

Does Google really take vindictive action against external critics?

Am I excessively paranoid?

Suggestions (or donations) of a domain name, too, please!

Updates

2010-10-19

The compliance team have been very helpful, pointing out where they feel we’re too commercial on AWHE. So it looks as though we can keep the domain name – the other TCs are happy with reducing the promotional content, which was always pretty light and never the primary motivation for the site.

We have not yet discovered why the complaint was brought at the time it was, nor why the initial approach to a group of people who had been actively and voluntarily working with Google, was so aggressive.

So there’s still some questions – why does Google always appear to assume that people it interacts with are fraudulent, deceptive or malicious, and must be threatened for compliance or abruptly removed from advertising? Isn’t there a way of approaching clients and partners that is better customer service – assuming for example that it may be oversight or ignorance rather than something requiring threats of action? I’m pretty sure that none of the customer service experts I know, would recommend starting every new dialogue with threats.