"Rising anti-Google sentiment in Korea’s Internet society?" What the hell is this crap?
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"Rising anti-Google sentiment in Korea’s Internet society?" What the hell is this crap?
Bad Behavior has blocked 23468 access attempts in the last 7 days.
13 Comments
“Google may at any time, in its sole discretion, terminate all or part of the Program, terminate this Agreement, or suspend or terminate the participation of any Site in all or part of the Program for any reason”
https://www.google.com/adsense/terms
Google reserves the right to rob you blind, just like PayPal.
I think Ambassador Vershbow should be forced to apologize for Google’s arrogance here.
A lot of contracts have that kind of boilerplate, Darin, and if the Korean company didn’t understand the TOS it’s their problem. Korean companies are notorious for treating contracts like toilet paper, so it’s rich that this guy is complaining in the first place.
I doubt he’d be doing this (or that we’d be talking about it) if it was Naver or Daum.
It’s interesting that Google is his target. Apart from infrequent grumbling about privacy issues and copyright problems with its cache, it’s usually surrounded by glowing karma.
OK, let’s make sure we understand what’s going on. This knucklehead is suing Google because he claims to be owed ~20 grand in click-through payments for about 60 days. At pennies per click, that means that he’s claiming that his site generated upwards of 2 million clicks on Google ads during that period. Oh, and he didn’t have some sort of automated clicker running or a deal with some portion of his user base to fluff up his stats. Right! Even with a claimed user base of 400K, his claim is incredible given the paucity of ads that would be generated by Ad Sense for a Korean language site. I confidently predict that this moron is going to have his head handed to him in the US courts. And that Google will not make the Ad Sense program available for Korean-based sites in the future.
But I have changed my mind after talking with reporters here since yesterday. They all encouraged me to sue Google U.S.A., and I will do so as soon as possible. Money is not a problem here.Ah, the “objectivity” of the Korean press at work.
(Since people lately have been questioning my Korea-related objectivity or whatever bullshit way they like to say it, I ask how you could ever have missed my seething disdain for the Korean media machine?which has its good people and good institutions, of course, but is overall the bane of Korea’s sociological health… how could you have missed that?!)
Michael wrote:
and if the Korean company didn’t understand the TOS it’s their problem. Korean companies are notorious for treating contracts like toilet paper, so it’s rich that this guy is complaining in the first place.
I’m sorry, Michael, but despite our recent lovefest over at the beheaded Tangun statue, I’m going to have to call you on this bit: Koreans W, X, Y, Z, and sometimes AA and BB don’t follow contracts, therefore no Korean has any business complaining about a non-Korean not following a contract. Sorry, Michael, but I don’t buy that.
Some hagwon owners do the same thing: It’s along the same logic as a hagwon owner saying that Canadians and Americans P, Q, R, S, and sometimes T and U have violated their legal work agreements so therefore I’m going to pre-emptively screw the other Canadians and Americans over. It’s a bullshit argument whatever side is making it.
Maybe my experiences are incredibly unique or I have the luck of the O’Kim Irish, but every single work and business contract to which I have been party has been followed, even in the cases where the read-the-contract dispute was in my favor. I’m not for a moment suggesting that every contract is followed in Korea?that is most definitely not the case?but there are plenty of people who do follow the rules (and I don’t know if that is the case with Humor University), so throwing back at them, “Well in your country contracts are notoriously treated like toilet paper,” is counterproductive. Unless you know that this guy has treated contracts like toilet paper, save the remark for the companies that have.
Sperwer wrote:
At pennies per click, that means that he’s claiming that his site generated upwards of 2 million clicks on Google ads during that period. Oh, and he didn’t have some sort of automated clicker running or a deal with some portion of his user base to fluff up his stats. Right!
Marmot’s Sitemeter clicker off to the right claims over 2,244,000 hits (over the past two years, I guess), with a much smaller base. Google’s ads would only be a small percentage of the total hits, but it’s not completely implausible.
I’ll have to look at my own AdSense data, but it might not be a good comparison, since the ads they put on my are very generic and often miss the point entirely (e.g., “Visit North Korea” popped up in a post mocking Kim Jong-il).
The email AdSense usually sends me is something like, “Are you still alive?” But I only get about 100 hits a day (sometimes double or triple that when big news breaks or when a new Korean site links the “Corea-versus-Korea” post). Maybe I need to start posting pictures of nude Mongolians.
Kushibo:
You say that Marmot’s site meter records ~2,25 million hits over 2 years on a small(er) base. As evidenced by the amount of time it’s taking me to get my site back up and running, I’m a bit technologically-challenged; I can’t find Marmot’s meter [DON'T go there!]. But I’ll take your word for it. However, it’s a meaningless statistic. We’re not talking about how many hits the knucklehead has, but how many of them go on to click Google generated ads on his site. (I don’t know about you, but I don’t even look at site ads, let alone click on them.) That alone, but especially coupled with the further implausibility that Ad Sense generated many ads at all for a Korean language site, puts his whole claim in the fraudulent car accident injury category. I’m sure he’ll find an ambulance chaser to take the case, but I’m equally sure the case won’t survive a motion for summary judgment. I hope his lawyer soaks him for a good fee, instead of taking it on contingency.
Lee said that he was supposed to receive a check of around 20 million won, but only received an e-mail from Google saying that it terminated the contract because it spotted unnatural behavior in the Humor Universitys Web site which seemed to raise the number of clicks.
And we all know that kind of stuff just does not happen here, period. I’m sorry, but I have to side with Google on this one, seeing how notorious Korean “netizens” are for manipulating online polls…
Of course it’s highly possible that Google is right about this, but I’d like to know what the evidence is before passing judgement. Maybe they have a bunch of clicks from the same sources in a way that can’t possibly be from live humans.
But I’m not going to just take it at face value that Google’s description of “unnatural behavior” really is unnatural behavior unless I know more about what it is. If they can prove “unnatural behavior” from Humor University, then they should have no problem with the lawsuit. Let the guy have his day in court (not that anyone here was denying him that).
Sperwer wrote:
I can’t find Marmot’s meter [DON'T go there!]. But I’ll take your word for it. However, it’s a meaningless statistic. We’re not talking about how many hits the knucklehead has, but how many of them go on to click Google generated ads on his site.
I don’t know. Maybe you didn’t read my comment closely (they’re so looong!), but I addressed what you said:Marmot’s Sitemeter clicker off to the right claims over 2,244,000 hits (over the past two years, I guess), with a much smaller base. Google’s ads would only be a small percentage of the total hits, but it’s not completely implausible.If Marmot can generate 3000 a day, how many a day can Humor University generate? If 1% hit the ads on a site that is frequently visited, it could be a high number. I’d like to know more about how many unique hits the guy gets. If the AdSense ads are more effective than they are at my site (supposedly they do get better the more traffic there is to a site), then the numbers are plausible.
More data is needed. If Judge Judy (the show, not the commenter) has taught me anything, it’s that you shouldn’t decide who’s guilty during the show intro.
(Judge Judy the commenter, you, too, have taught me something: Roh Moohyun should never get a technicolor dye-job.)
Darin, you really don’t know what is up. This fellow is so full of **it that it is not funny. Korea is the country where the main ISPs like Kornet and apparently the guys that run the backbone from which Korea is connected to the rest of the internet (KIDC) do regular business with spammers and criminals for money. Though it may be possible that Google has made a mistake, I seriously don’t think that they are guilty of anything other than avoiding getting flim-flamed by this guy.
This guy needs to get Hwanged.
Kushibo:
I read your comment. Would you like to borrow my old powdered wig? If you also got the right suitings kit, you’d probably look like one of those old “Spy” caricatures of the toffs of pettifoggery at the Chancery Courts or wandering arounds the Inns of Court. Sure, no one’s in a position to pass legal judgment at this stage. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make an educated guess at the outcome even now.
Google is planning to fight the request made by the U.S. department of justice to hand over a week’s worth of search data. I just thought i’d say it here since this article is about google and all…