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12-Year-Old Boy Gets $100K Bill From Google After Confusing Adwords With Adsense (theregister.co.uk)
The names Google gives to its services can be a bit confusing at times, especially since there are so many of them. For example, Adwords and Adsense look and sound very similar but they deal with two different transaction types. While Adwords deals with spending money, Adsense deals with earning money. A 12-year-old boy in Spain managed to confused the two services and ended up with a bill of 100,000 euros ($111,490). The Register reports: Jose Javier, 12, had signed up for Google's Adwords program in order to make money from advertisements placed alongside YouTube videos of his band, the Torrevieja llamada Los Salerosos -- en ingles, the Torrevieja Fun Guys -- named after the Alicante town in which he lives. Unfortunately, for the young musician, Google's AdWords program is for those wishing to advertise at cost, rather than run advertisements for profit. According to a report from Spanish daily El Pais, Jose and a friend planned to buy instruments, play music, get rich and buy a mansion by subscribing to the service. By early September the account was being billed by Google, receiving charges which reportedly rose quickly from an initial 15 euros ($16.72) to 19,700 euros ($21,960.57) at a time until the amount owed hit six figures. Google's statement noted that AdWords has age restrictions in place and encouraged families to familiarize itself with its Safety Center, but the boy's mother complained to El Pais that it was too easy for her son to make the purchases from Google, requiring him only to provide his savings account details, which he did in mid-August. Thankfully, Google was kind enough to cancel the outstanding balance on its Adwords service.
Darn it, if only I'd known sooner that pretending to be a 12-year old boy could have gotten me $100k of advertising for free, then I might not have been fired from my previous job.
In the United States, contracts with underage individuals are usually not enforceable unless ratified after the minor reaches adulthood or approved by a court. I am guessing there is something similar in Spain, although the ages may vary.
Real lawyers write in C++
"requiring him only to provide his savings account details, which he did in mid-August."
Eh, why did you give a 12 year old this information in the first place? I am genuinely confused as to why he had the banking info needed.
So that people without it wont bother trying to use the service.
Children under the age of 13 do not belong on the internet.
After all that advertising, they still hadn't sold enough to pay the bill?
Sounds like Google ads don't really work all that well.
While most of us expect commenters not to read TFA, most of us expect that they read at least a couple sentences of the summary.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Bummer that neither story includes a link to his channel, he could've gotten some good exposure.
Same here. I learned a few things. With that head start, I learned about other types of accounts, so now I have a 401k, an IRA, a Roth, an HSA ...
Then again, I started typing up invoices and sending them out when I was 12. I remember the first invoice I mailed was to the elementary school I attended the year before, for services I performed at their school carnival.
that google sold him $100k worth of advertising before collecting any money (there couldn't have been much in his savings account). And they didn't bother to verify much. It tells me they're having trouble moving ad space....
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... because a contract with a minor is legally unenforceable.
The last time I used Adwords, it was necessary to pay a sum of money in advance. Once that sum was used up, the ad would automatically stop running. When did Google change from prepay to billing after the ads have already run?
I didn't know they still print $100,000 bills. I remember $500's though. Wish they still made them.
I used Adwords a few years ago, as a kind of test. At the time, I set a limit of $100, thus depending on how many people click the ad, the limit is reached more or less quickly. But in any case, $100 was the maximum I had to pay.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Only a commie scam-artist like you would have done that, roman_mir
Something is fishy about this story. Google Adwords in Spain uses an Automatic Payment system which requires a credit card and which demands payments when the new account reaches a charge of 50 Euros. Google Adwords stops all account advertising if the bill is not paid immediately. The "billing threshold" increases over time as payments are made but typically for most accounts the "billing threshold" will reach the point where a payment is demanded for every 500 Euros of account activity or every 30 days whichever comes first. The Google Adwords payment system is set up to avoid ever getting into the situation described in the article about this boy. Those much rarer accounts which have pay-per-click advertisements that cost well above this billing threshold have safeguards in place to ensure that payments are going to be made before Adwords allows the account to engage in placing those ads. This article smells not only fishy but also tastes like baloney.
I'm pretty sure I've seen a couple other posts by Anonymous Coward...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
In my country google would have to cover it themselfs. 12 year old here cant make legally binding contracts...
They were (at least were I live) legally forced to write it off since the 12-year-old was legally unable to sign a contract like this.
Therefore all costs or fees from this contract are null and void.
You spelled 'frist' incorrectly.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Therefore, they were "kind" in the same sense that a mugger surrounded by a SWAT team is "kind enough" to drop the gun.
An autopilot on a boat or plane requires constant human supervision to make sure it doesn't kill you. So Tesla named their semi-autonomous driving feature 'Autopilot' because that tells the story, right? Nope. People are reading or sitting in the passenger seat while their car drives merrily down the highway.
You could name a big red button the "Thiswillkillyou button" and people would still press it to see what it did.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wasn't this a clue that something was wrong?
For what: What work did Google do for them?
One of the main banks in Canada, CIBC, had what were called Owl accounts for kids which were fee-exempt and allowed parents to monitor. IIRC they had some bad press at one time when kids passed the age threshold and were suddenly dumped into fee-based accounts without notice.
A 12 year old cannot enter into a legally binding contract. Google screwed up.
Minors can enter into some contracts for "Necessities" such as food, housing, legal, or medical services by themselves without a legal guardian. these are enforceable and not voidable just for being a minor.
Come on guys. There was no confusion. Every time you sign up for a service they ALWAYS tell you what the terms are. This isn't Google's first business after all. They have a whole team that does nothing but figure out legal stuff. In order to participate you have to agree to a bunch of terms. One of which of course would have barred him - his age.
So no, there was no confusion. He didn't read the contract. Just like a lot of slashdot people (ok, just about all of us) that never bother to RTFA.
This story seems a little bit weird. First of all, Google has a policy of suing the people and companies that don't pay their balances. I know this because we received a notice from them after we forgot to pay one of the bills after we advertised our website through their services. I'm not sure if this policy applies all over Europe but since I live in the EU, I can conclude that Spain must be included. Therefore, it seems unlikely to me that Google would just let one of their advertisers (regardless of the age) keep pilling on debt, month after month. Good ol' Google even erased the kid's balance. What a kind hearted company! Let me ask this question: What would happen if 100.000 clients all made the same mistake? What would Google do then?