I’m typically a big fan of Google - the company does and enables amazing things, but I’ve always been a bit hesitant to fully trust all of my infrastructure to them because centralizing my entire life around a single platform or company always feels a bit dangerous to me.

I’ve recently had this fear confirmed by a recent experience of one of my ventures. Said venture uses Google Analytics(great product) and Google AdSense. Google Analytics is used to provide some very nice business metrics and Google AdSense has always been a side thing, not critical to the company, but we’ve got it on a few pages, and it generates coffee money. We’ve had it on various pages for around two years with no problems.

One day recently, the company receives an email from Google stating that our AdSense use has been turned off because it has been determined to “pose a significant risk” to Google advertisers - which by the way, the venture is one of. The email was very mysterious and pointed the company to form where it could file an appeal. A legitimate appeal was filed and quickly turned down without any further information. The venture continues to pursue recourse to clear it’s good name with Google.

I understand that Google has to protect it’s business aggressively, and luckily, the venture doesn’t depend on the revenue for it’s cashflow, but I did learn a few things from this experience:

1. Don’t use Google AdSense and Google Analytics at the same time. Not only did Google turn off AdSense completely(no access to previous revenue info, etc.), they also disabled our data collection/visibility for Google Analytics, so we have no way easy to get our business metrics for the four days they blanked out.
2. Using Google AdSense can lead to a big conflict of interest with Google that can cause them to shut off other services they provide. I understand why, Google must protect its revenue stream, but innocents get caught in the crossfire.
3. Know where conflicts of interest can arise. The venture had never even considered that using AdSense could eliminate access to key business data on Analytics.

Although I’m using a true story about Google as an example, this could happen with any large platform. The essence of this story is that centralizing one’s life around a powerful platform that is controlled by a single entity puts one’s life in the hands of that entity. Not a new revelation, but perhaps something people are forgetting as they upload their personalities and life onto Facebook. How many twentysomethings would find themselves cut off from their reality if Facebook suddenly cut off access to their account because of a mysterious conflict of interest?

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