Google AdSense Denies 419 Claim!

An alleged former Google employee has anonymously published unconfirmed allegations that AdSense purposefully banned publishers right before their periodic payout so it could keep their ad revenue. But Google denies this as “a complete fiction”, and based on our examination of the report, the allegations look false. There may have been mechanisms in place to prevent scamming publishers this way, and linguistic clues suggest the author didn’t work at Google.

At our request, Google provided TechCrunch with this statement strongly denying the accusations:

“This description of our AdSense policy enforcement process is a complete fiction. The color-coding and ‘extreme quality control’ programs the author describes don’t exist. Our teams and automated systems work around the clock to stop bad actors and protect our publishers, advertisers and users.

All publishers that sign up for AdSense agree to the Terms and Conditions of the service and aset of policies designed to ensure the quality of the network for users, advertisers and other publishers. When we discover violations of these policies, we take quick action, which in some cases includes disabling the publisher’s account and refunding affected advertisers.”  

The report doesn’t include hard evidence, and the whole thing might just be from a jilted publisher or someone else out to harm Google. Still, it could spark an investigation into AdSense’s banning procedure or at least a loss of confidence amongst AdSense publishers even if it’s untrue.

The whistleblower purports to have worked at Google since at least 2009, and says they waited until their identity could be concealed before coming forward. They wrote on Pastebin, “To sum it up for everyone, I took part in what I (and many others) would consider theft of money from the publishers by Google, and from direct orders of management.”

Tech crunch