I received the following email last night, and it still has my fur standing-on-end (defensive rage).

Subject: Google AdSense ad serving has been disabled to your site

This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not
accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

During a recent review of your account we found that you are currently
displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our program
policies
(https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=48182&stc=aspe-1pp-en).

--------------------------------------------------
EXAMPLE PAGE: http://foolswisdom.com/

Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may
exist on other pages of this website or other sites in your network.

VIOLATION(S) FOUND:

It is important for a site displaying AdSense to offer significant value
to the user by providing unique and relevant content, and not to place ads
on auto-generated pages or pages with little to no original content.

Your site should also provide a good user experience through clear
navigation and organization. Users should be able to easily click through
your pages and find the information they are seeking.

Please review Google's Webmaster Quality Guidelines (
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66361 ) for
more information.

ACTION TAKEN: We have disabled ad serving to your site.

ACCOUNT STATUS: ACTIVE
Your AdSense account remains active. However, please note that our team
reserves the right to disable your account at any time. As such, we
encourage you to become familiar with our program policies and monitor
your network accordingly.

Issue ID# 3227412

--------------------------------------------------
Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team
----------------
For more information regarding this email, please visit our Help Center:
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=113058&stc=aspe-ai4-en.

Emphasis was mine.

The only pieces of useful information would seem to be “EXAMPLE PAGE: http://foolswisdom.com/“. The reason is provided as an exercise for the reader to solve, and the status of disabled, but active almost makes the whole thing humorous. The email also has the feel of treating good customer’s like criminals, because of how “bad” customers behave.

So what do I do with this information? “Please do not reply to this message.” That’s the real problem, not my AdSense account. I’ve received an anxiety causing email, and I’m helpless.

Don Dodge, then at Microsoft, now at Google(!), wrote October 27, 2007 what still resonates with me today “Will Google Docs and Spreadsheets succeed in the enterprise? I don’t think Google will succeed in the enterprise. Why? Customer Support.”

“Google doesn’t understand people,” [Don Norman] said. “Have you ever spoken to a Google support person on the phone? They don’t have them. Sure, they’ll direct you to their blogs — where you’ll be lucky if you can find the answer you’re looking for — or they’ll let you give feedback. But do they ever give you feedback on your feedback?”
FROM “DON NORMAN: GOOGLE DOESN’T GET PEOPLE, IT SELLS THEM” BY BOBBIE JOHNSON ON GIGAOM.COM, SEPT 5, 2011

I think they do understand people, and have a stubborn resolve to demonstrate that machines can be programmed to help man better than man can help herself.

They’ll tell you it’s a scalability problem:

If you have a billion users, and a mere 0.1% of them have an issue that requires support on a given day (an average of one support issue per person every three years), and each issue takes 10 minutes on average for a human to personally resolve, then you’d spend19 person-years handling support issues every day.

If each support person works an eight-hour shift each day then you’d need 20,833 support people on permanent staff just to keep up.

That, folks, is internet scale.

That is cold, machine cold, comfort.

Customer support isn’t the 1 in a 1000, 10 minute on average problem, customer support is the support you receive under exceptional circumstances. This is when you need support, and when most companies fail to deliver.

So what do you do when you need support from Google? Either you know a Matt Cutts (there is only one!), or you hope your friends, like Chris Messina, working on Google+ and other promising tools with warmth, will help Google find balance and treat their customers, like you know, people.

Oh, and if there is anyone on the Google AdSense team reading this, I suspect that there is a bug in your “review of your account” software, as you probably should have terminated CloudFlare’s account, not mine.

In some ways, technology has reshaped the way I approach and solve problems — forcing me to think in terms of adoption strategies first, rather than always trying to find the simplest, cleanest design, because of the disadvantaged position I occupied as a non-coder.
Chris Messina, “Happy birthday to me! I’m joining Google“, Jan 7th, 2010

I think all of us, non-coders or non-non-coders, could benefit by focusing more on solving customers’ problems, and  focusing more on how we get our solutions into customers hands.

Oh, and congratulations Chris on the new job!

My good friend Chris Messina wrote a very interesting article, which in many ways comes down to a large, influential part of the web development community being disenfranchised from Mozilla.

Doom! Of course John Lilly is playing cool on the outside, because they have long fought giants. Mozilla’s ability to combat goliaths, and live with fear and uncertain contribute to them being the best browser development community there is.

Although Mozilla is the best browser community, like Chris Messina, I consider myself part of the disenfranchised community, tired of the Firefox is the web mentality. But I will readily admit nobody has a better track record than Mozilla for open source consumer software development.

As impatient consumers, particularly impatient geek consumers, we all want our pet issues addressed right NOW. One of the greatest achievements of Mozilla these last few years is worrying about the right problems at the right time. And one thing they’ve always gotten mostly right is enabling participation in all aspects of Firefox development, promotion and support.

My instincts tell me that it has slowed them down (a lot), but positions them well for the long game.

In many ways their community, their team, is like the guiding principle of the Internet, they can remove a number of members, and the team will continue to function. Firefox development is highly robust and survivable.

Are leaders like Dave Hyatt, Ben Goodger, Blake Ross, Joe Hewitt, and Mike Schroepfer missed? Of course they are, but these are only a few of the many Mozilla champions.

“We build Firefox with an open development process. At Mozilla people earn respect, authority and decision-making ability by demonstrating their abilities. This allows individual people to become full, equal participants, with both authority and responsibility for building a better Internet. The development process for Firefox demonstrates the type of Internet we want to build. (Not perfectly, of course.)”

Chrome will be the browser built by Google, like Safari is the browser built by Apple. Firefox is the browser built by everyone.

Everyone that can cope in the structured, programmer-geeky rule laden Mozilla open source community. But maybe that is what is required for such a complex and important product.

What track record does Google have in open source development of consumer software? Any?

By extension what track record does Google have in supporting consumer products? Here they do have one, and it’s a poor one. Automation ultimately doesn’t cut it. Also, it’s much more fun when the software is installed, as opposed to a web service that you fix and update any time.

What community leaders has Google assembled for these heady tasks?

What open source tools do these Google leaders have in their arsenals? As great of gifts as the Netscape source code in 1998 were the open source tools to develop and collaborate on development.

Although today using Bugzilla and Bonsai (with Hg Web Viewer a poor replacement) would probably drive me nuts, those are a couple of the tools that makes development of a large, complete product by a large Mozilla community possible.

Google Code seems great for small projects, or non-consumer software projects with small teams, but I’m not convinced that Google Code is up for the challenge of a web browser. But I suspect it doesn’t have to be.

I don’t expect Chrome to become a leader in the browser space. I expect it to be about writing cool code, solving cool engineering problems, and pressuring Mozilla into solving the problems that Google cares about, or someone else will take Google’s code and solve them.

The greatest gift of open source isn’t the right to fork, but the ability to merge. I expect Apple to be the first to incorporate this generously licensed code (third-party software). But Mozilla won’t be that far behind, because with the top teams collaborating on WebKit, the myth of the masses will be eroded. Sure, Mozilla’s development team may be made up mostly of volunteers, but those contributions are often picking at the surface of problems or polishing generally solved problems. The complexity of code necessitates highly skilled, highly focused, full time developers.

Chrome’s technologies will be powerful forces for the Mozilla disenfranchised. Will WebKit one day power Firefox? What other technologies or experiences will we see Firefox adopt from Chrome?

My first project is to help Mozilla Central/Eastern European communities and raise the awareness of what’s going there in Mozilla project. ) It means that I consider myself as a kind of evangelist, strengthening Mozilla signal in Central and Eastern Europe and on the other hand strengthening the signal from those countries inside Mozilla.

It sounds like he will have a similar community role combining evangelism and technical leadership in internalization and localization there. It seems like a natural progression in his career. He will be continuing his work that was previous volunteering for Mozilla and combining it with a mandate. He is a incredible addition to the Mozilla Corp team!

Zbiggy is a lot of fun to work and hang out with. His energy and passion for open source and helping everyone (around the world) get access to great software and web services is infectious.

I’m not surprised that he studies sociology at university. He really cares about people and tries to improve things on the greatest scales. He is one of my inspirations.

Zbigniew was generous enough to answer some of my questions about his transition over email.

If one has recently read “not-invented-here syndrome in Mozilla” they might be very surprised by you joining Mozilla Corp, except if they really know you. If they know you then they would appreciate the article as your usual candor, and that you were and are as passionate and positive about Mozilla as ever.

This isn’t the first time that Mozilla has considered hiring you and you considering joining their team as an employee, what made the union successful this time?

Tricky question. I can’t say there is a single reason, it’s more that I have grown. I consider any projects as a kind of adventure, a challenge. It has to have the excitement factor, it has to be worth taking, but on the other hand, you have to be mature enough to be a useful part of the team — not the one dangling at the rear of the group. It’s much easier to just stay a volunteer. Mozilla is a unique kind of organization, successfully experimenting with merging corporate business with community and openness to the extend not tested before. It’s unwise to jump in, scream a lot and try to influence the direction of such a huge and tremendous effort, when you don’t feel ready yet. And it’s not worth jumping in to sit down in the corner. So now I feel I can at least whisper something from time to time

Another factor is that Mozilla is reaching the first major creative reorganization since Firefox was accepted as the flagship product. With David Ascher leading a new communication-focused effort, John Lilly taking over the CEO role, stronger investigation of mobile zone and what’s most important, Mozilla 2 project shaping up, there’s a lot of exciting things going to happen I spent the last years volunteering in Mozilla, and, honestly, Flock was the place where much more exciting things were happening for me – as it always happens with pre-1.0 startups. Thanks to the Flock team, I had a chance to participate in the birth of a new web browser, focused on the social web, free to experiment with each and every part of the UI… that was amazing – you should remember that too

So post 1.0 “My World” is much more reliable, and I’m so happy to see that Flock 1.0, Flock 1.1, and Flock 1.2 are all pretty much ready in terms of internationalization without me spending sleepless nights on it

The last factor is the right project. I’m studying sociology, I’m fascinated in how the community works, and while being a member of Mozilla Europe board, I was always pushing in the direction of human social studies on the communities. To understand them better and help them help us So it seems that I managed to get my proposal through

Who will you be reporting to?

I’m extremely proud that Paul Kim, who was always extremely helpful to me, agreed to be my manager Besides that, I am, of course, reporting to, and cooperating with Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, and Jane Finette, who’s Director of European Marketing at MoCo

What new opportunities and challenges ahead are you most excited by?

Everything. I’m diving through Mozilla’s corporate culture, routines, learning new names, I must say a lot has changed in Mozilla since the Firefox 1.0 days. Jane is extremely helpful in guiding me through the first weeks, and, what’s maybe even more important, she’s very patient. Thank you, Jane!

I hope to start blogging much more often about my major project in Mozilla, but first I need to prepare for FOSDEM and do the backlog after my exam session.

No one would question your integrity, but many people appreciated your independence, is there anyone else that will provide your previous perspective straddling the Mozillas?

I’m surrounded by extraordinary people, who’re participating in one of the biggest open projects in the history of the Internet. I know many of them for almost 8 years now. I don’t feel that anything changes here. For last 2 years I’ve been a member of the board in Mozilla Europe, so I don’t feel like I’m getting any new inclusive view.

I also hope that my friends, who know me, will be able to kick my butt if they feel like I’m getting conformist It includes you!

Who will be asking all the interesting questions?

Hey, I can promise there are no brain washes on the way into Mozilla. Noone asks you to sign any chirography and nobody “proofreads” my blog posts. Everything is still the same

I don’t expect my questions to stop appearing, I expect myself to have a bit more influence on causes of those questions. As I mentioned at the beginning. It’s a responsibility. I’m joining people like Axel, Pascal, Seth who’re on the first line of communication with our community. This is a kind of role that requires a lot of pushing here and there to get things working better for outsiders.

Don’t worry, there’s always this kick-in-the-butt or slap-with-the-trout whistleblowing system applied in case of emergency

What will your legacy at Flock be?

Flock can be localized to zillion+one language. And Flock has localizers that are localizing the trunk. If one is in the l10n business, he knows what that means.

Besides, I think I was the initial concept author for what’s now called My World, and there are some other small things that were shaped when I was around. I think I brought the coffee for Chris when he doing some nice mockups – that counts, right?

Have you found any time for working on Bugzilla lately?

Nah. I’m still in the very same point with this: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/gandui/ being quite a good concept IMHO

I’m not going to promise that I’ll find time for this. I won’t work on the dashboard until I feel I have a lot of time for my girl, hobbies, job and life

Zbigniew responses share his usual exuberance, humor, and humility. He is too modest. I remember him championing the My World experience based on Netvibes and similar experiences long ago. It became one of my favorite ideas, and I still am looking forward to a more customizable experience being in Flock, a related experience being part of all web browsers, and tighter integration of widgets in desktop OSs, but I digress.

When I asked Clayton Stark, Flock’s VP of Engineering, who would be filling Zbiggy’s big shoes, he said that the responsibilities would be shared among various folks. He had nothing, but extreme appreciation to his work and contribution at Flock:

Gandalf has been a major contributor to Flock for a very long time, and he has been instrumental in securing localizers to create the long list of language versions we now have. Beyond this, Gandalf has always been an active voice in the evolution of Flock, and a great person to work with. I congratulate him in his official move to Mozilla — in my opinion, Mozilla Europe has lucked out to get such a great person on their team.

Definitely, this is great news for Mozilla. Congratulations Zbigniew! Congratulations Mozilla!

PS. Zbiggy has created a Open Projects community survey. Please take the little time to help him in this project.

• Podcast Citizen Garden, “seeding the citizen web”
  
• Videocast OpenMediaWeb, “exploring the possibilities and opportunities of the Open Media Web and developing the methods, formats and protocols to make it possible.”

Both already have a couple great sessions and other content. Enjoy!

Scoble broke the law by sharing our personal data with Plaxo.

Was that really so hard?

Now, I don’t know if that accusation true, but that I think is the accusation they are trying to make. If Dennis and Thomas do want to argue that then it should be a foundation of legal precedence — how plain Dennis finds the English isn’t how any of the legal work as far as I’m aware, nor does it respect the complexity of electronic data storage.

Still, I don’t find that is interesting as to whether Scoble broke our trust, which I hoped to challenge in my original article . It seems far fewer would argue that he had broke our trust if he had used a tool that didn’t provide the data to another service, in this case Plaxo.

In the process, I’ve demonstrated why a conversational approach isn’t appropriate for an accusation of legality

For the people that suggest that Facebook‘s Terms of Service describe either the legal or social contract, get your heads out of the sand! Terms of Services are clubs wielded by poor designs or when polite requests fail. The experience of your service is your tool for describing the contract.

I’m really excited to see what comes from the work of the wonderful people participating in DataPortability — the group includes a lot of people I greatly admire: Robert Scoble, Brad Fitzpatrick, Scott Kveton, Marc Canter, Dries Buytaert, Kristopher Tate, Blaine Cook, Chris Messina, and so many other appropriately experienced people considering these challenges.