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Google AdSense publishers take note: The "Don't Be Evil" hypocrite has struck again. Writing in the AdSense blog on behalf of Google, Talia Brodecki, AdSense Product Marketing, says that unless you are in North America, South America or Japan, you can no longer earn commissions referring new publishers to the AdSense contextual advertising product. What about Central America?
This change, and the other below, take place somewhere "during the last week of January," according to the blog. This only effects commissions for referrals to AdSense.
Justifying cutting off most of the world from earning a modest benefit from bringing in other small publishers to AdSense, the blog post said "We've found that this referral product has not performed as well as we had hoped in these regions." What does that mean? My guess is that it cost too much to administer given the fees associated with international financial transactions and auditing the records to ensure the pending commissions were valid and not part of some fraudulent scheme.
So with less than a month's notice (the blog is posted Tuesday, January 08, 2008 at 12:43:00 PM), in classic Google disingenuousness, knowing many publishers will have links all over the place and a difficult time finding and removing non-earning for them, but very much earning for Google links, the blog concludes "We appreciate your support of this referral product, and hope it won't cause you any inconvenience." Right.
What if you are in the part of the world that remains active?
Google is lowering your potential commission from as much as $2000 (if certain performance and validation criteria were met), to $100 - that is a huge hit. It is killing the peak potential commission earned if a publisher referred 25 valid publishers who earned $100 in a 180 day period. There were also bonuses of $250 and $5 dropped. Now, the only commission available to you is $100 (per referral), if a new AdSense user (valid, of course), earns $100 within 180 days of sign-up.
These changes, and the Orwellian language about the "inconvenience," reflect the arrogance regretfully so commonplace at Google.
The truth is these changes were made to serve the interests of Google's stockholder masters and it will harm many many small publishers.
Google, all evil, all the time.
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