Google is constantly banning AdSense publishers but this new ban is very interesting.
About two weeks ago, Google banned Jef Poskanzer, a computer programmer, known for being the first person to post a weekly FAQ to Usenet, and the owner of acme.com. He is incredibly well known in the Internet world - so this is ban is a big deal.
Yesterday, he informed the world of his AdSense ban and explained how he has no idea how it happened. Google basically told him that his site generates too much invalid clicks and Google needs to protect their AdWords advertisers. But in the 8.5 years of his site running AdSense, he never had an issue before like this.
Even Google's Matt Cutts got wind of the news and posted it on his Google+ page where you can see he is torn. He wrote:
I just saw that we terminated Jef Poskanzer from AdSense, which caused Nelson Minar (former Googler and one of the creators of the Ads API) to give up on defending us. . I can't easily imagine Jef Poskanzer was click-spamming AdSense, while at the same time I trust the judgment and abilities of the AdSense team. +Jef Poskanzer , I hope someone digs into the case to investigate deeply and reaches out if there's any more info we can share.
Yea, read the post by Nelson Minar at somebits.com - he writes "Google is too powerful, too arrogant, too entrenched to be worth our love. Let them defend themselves, I'd rather devote my emotional energy to the upstarts and startups. They deserve our passion." I rarely ever see a former Googler badmouth Google but it is happening more and more these days.
Anyway, I wonder if Google will reverse their decision on this quickly or share more information. This is pretty huge.
Forum discussion at Hacker News and Google+.
Update: February 6, I now see Google AdSense ads on the site again. I guess they were reinstated.
