That sounds like fraud. Why not take Google to court?

Because any challenge will lose. It is in their terms of service that what they are doing is legal. But nobody is going to read 70+ of legalese just to set up a campaign.

The issue is that they have not been good faith actors for many years now.

As explained by other comments above there is a hidden setting you need to change to get Google to actually run your ads in the areas you selected.

> Because any challenge will lose. It is in their terms of service that what they are doing is legal.

I don't think that's even close to a given, but consider how much time and money it would take to fight that lawsuit — they would be loathe to settle since it'd validate the idea for other customers, and you'd have to put in that effort hoping that they wouldn't succeed in being able to say it was a misunderstanding on your part or some nebulous “bug” which has reportedly been fixed. Most people don't lose anywhere near enough money this way for it to be worth fighting, especially since a lot of businesses would be worried about potentially being demoted on Google Maps, search, etc.

It doesn’t matter if it’s in the ToS if everything else misrepresents and misleads the user. Or regularly gets changed to undermine the user’s expectations. That’s bad faith, fraud, etc.

They may be “technically” abiding by their contract, but this is why judges are humans. Fraud is fraud.

Legislation and a companies terms of service are very different things.

> It is in their terms of service that what they are doing is legal

I don't know what you're trying to say, but that sentence is complete nonsense.

You can't make an illegal action legal by putting it in a contract.

There isn't any precedent that confusing UX is illegal, is there? If a user enables "interested in NYC" when they mean "browsing from NYC" is a judge going to get involved?

There absolutely is. Fraudulent misrepresentation and concealment.

If they are purposely making it difficult to understand and choose options then that can be a form of fraud.

Is there any precedent of someone proving fraudulent concealment based on a confusing UX?

I believe so, but I know various SaaS’s cancellation UX’s have been litigated.

It's not about logic or even law. Suing a giant like Google implies a base cost in legal fees that is simply not an option for most regular companies. They'll draw you out in procedure way before you can see a juge, let alone plead your case.

Global corporations are in a league of their own.

You can sign away certain rights or accept certain terms that would otherwise open avenues for a legal claim though, which is effectively what OP means I think.

Because I'm wary of litigation and unfortunately depend on Google for some of my business. I assume litigation would mean being removed from their platforms.

You funding the lawsuit?