In Google’s quest to do no evil, it fails miserably.

The nature of the flaw in Google's business model ensures that evil will permeate their process. Their model, as do the models of so many internet-based enterprises, denies the value of human interaction. Holding email conversations interrupted by two-day gaps in no way resembles human interaction. Any company that doesn't embrace the notion of timely, personal, genuinely responsive customer service, as Google most assuredly doesn't, will inevitably do evil on a daily basis. Below is one such example of that evil that Google do so well.

Several years ago, in an attempt to bring more visibility to my website, I opened a Google Adword account. For me, this was no mean feat. I was stymied at the point in the process where I had to determine how much I wanted to pay for every clickthrough. The guidance they provide was just short of useless. I could pay a penny per clickthrough, or $100, but there was no intelligible way of determining what amount made sense for me. All I knew was that the more you paid, the better your odds were of having your GoogleAd show up on the first page of an appropriate search.
Then something remarkable happened. I somehow managed to circumvent the virtually impervious Google wall, and actually got ahold of a phone number that connected me with a live Google employee. This was, from all I’ve heard, a very improbable accomplishment.
On top of that, the person I spoke with was friendly, patient and helpful. She spent a considerable time explaining the complicated formula by which one determines the amount they should pay per clickthrough. I didn’t understand much of what she said, but I was able to land on a figure that seemed reasonable. It gave me a very good shot at showing up on that first page, without putting me out of business the first month.
I began paying for a reasonable number of clickthroughs every month, typically between $100 and $150 a month. Now and then a clickthrough would actually lead to contact from someone out there in internet land inquiring about my services. Over the next couple of years, two of these contacts turned into paying projects, and one of those became an ongoing client. Seen in that light, the money I invested in the GoogleAd seemed to pay off. It certainly was far more effective than any other strategy I had tried to make my website visible.
Then I took a full time position at a local ad agency. After a few months, it occurred to me that the money I was still spending every month for my GoogleAd was being wasted. Even if I were contacted by someone with a project, I couldn’t take it on because my full time job precluded it.
So I decided to pull the plug on the GoogleAd and save myself that chunk of money every month.
Here’s where Google’s insidiously evil ways became manifest. On January 17, 2004, I first attempted to follow the process outlined on the Google site for canceling the account. As with the initial registration process, I was almost immediately stymied. The instructions told me that I should do such and such and it would take me to a page where I should do so and so. I did such and such, but the page that appeared contained absolutely no opportunity to do so and so. I started over, and followed the process to that same point, with the same brick wall result.
So what does one do next? Well, in the world of Google, the only option is to email them, which I did. Of course, Google takes two days to respond to any email. So right there, that’s two days that I’m being charged for my GoogleAd clickthroughs, which, if their process worked, I would not have had to pay, because my account would already have been cancelled.
Two days later, I received an email from Google, essentially telling me to do the same thing I had tried and failed to do two days earlier. Clerarly, they had not read, or comprehended, or taken seriously, the email I had sent, explaining the difficulty I was having. So I had to email them back and tell them again that this process wasn’t working for me.
I will spare you the ensuing blow by blow. Suffice to say, several more emails were exchanged. A phone call was placed. All to no avail. Google’s responses to my pleas, none of which actually responded to my concerns and questions, became more combative. My responses followed suit.
Meanwhile, day after day clickthroughed by, and the charges kept mounting. Finally, a letter was sent to SCHMIDT, the big Googlehead himself. In that letter, I chronicled my fruitless conversation with his company, complete with copies of the emails. Incredibly, no one from the Google Fortress ever responded to that letter. In my considerable experience with these sorts of situations, being stonewalled at the corporate level of a company only happens at the most unscrupulous, bottom-feeding companies. I almost always get some sort of response, even if it’s only a form letter. I even got a response from Best Buy eventually, during a recent altercation, after the customer service reps there, to a person, solemnly vowed that a written response would be impossible.
Meanwhile, somehow or other, I finally succeeded in canceling my account. I seem to have wiped the specifics from my memory, which I’m told is not uncommon in cases of extreme trauma.
This cancellation occurred in February, approximately five weeks from when I first attempted to cancel.
The next month my credit card bill showed a charge from Google of almost $150 for the period of time during which all of this back and forth was going on. I immediately called the credit card company and protested that charge. I sent them the trail of emails and made my case for why I shouldn’t be held responsible for those charges.
Here it is two years later, and I never heard if or when this matter got resolved. I was never credited the money. Frankly, I had moved on, carrying with me only a very bitter taste from the experience.
About a year ago, I left my full time position and returned to my freelance business. Recently, I began wondering to myself if, despite the horrible experience they put me through, I should consider re-opening the GoogleAD account. After all, it had been the only successful internet marketing tactic that had worked for me.
I decided I might consider it, if and only if Google would agree to let me do so by phone, so as to avoid most of the pain they inflicted on me the last time. I emailed Google with this proposal.
Two days later, I received a reply (which I’m now convinced is not generated by a human, but, rather, by a form-email-spewing program at Google, because the language is largely identical with the responses I was receiving two years ago).
The reply starts out benignly enough, apologizing for my frustrating experience. But before too long, the email lets me know that Google is still fighting with my credit card company over that final charge from two years ago.
I am stunned. First of all, how can this matter remain unresolved after all this time? Secondly, how can Google be so recalcitrant and short-sighted, risking such an enormous amount of bad will—the kind of bad will that might cause a person like, say, me, to post the whole evil story on his blahhg, and even send the story, in letter-to-the-editor form, to the next magazine that runs a worshipful article on how brilliant Google is and how admirable their “do no evil” thing is?