Google has good lawyers, and their terms are both brief and written in plain English with no "fine print".
It doesn't matter how many lawyers they've got. For one thing, in most places in the West, if you're in a small claims court or the equivalent then professional lawyers probably won't be allowed. And if your case is large enough to be heard in full court, it's worth hiring your own lawyer, and they're going to drive a pretty obvious hole through any contract of adhesion where the terms are essentially "We can decide arbitrarily that you're in violation and thus refuse to hold up our end of the deal".
...none of them have invalidated the contract in a courtroom thus far AFAIK...
Are you familiar with the case of Aaron Greenspan?
The key facts as reported appear to be that he did take them to small claims court after they shut down his account and wouldn't explain why, and he won. They then appealed, and they won, but only after identifying two specific ways in which they considered one of his sites did violate their terms (at least one of which is explicitly identified in the wording they use today, though I don't know whether either or both was at the time) which is all he was asking for in the first place.
Net result: Google were probably out far more in time and money than he was, and got a healthy dose of bad press for their behaviour throughout. The lawyers might call it a win, but I bet neither the accountants nor the PR guys did.
I said that as evidence that their contracts are likely written to be enforceable.
> Are you familiar with the case of Aaron Greenspan?
To summarize, the contract was entirely enforceable and Mr. Greenspan suffered further losses to bring and defend on appeal a fruitless case. He also proved that Google is not willing to walk away from even small losses.
The answer to "if your AdSense account is terminated, who not just sue?" has little to do with plaintiff/defendant cost ratios, or who looks worse in the media. Most AdSense account holders are just trying to earn a living, not personally finance a negative PR campaign. Few have the resources or inclination for that kind of thing.
To summarize, the contract was entirely enforceable
That's not a very fair summary. They didn't succeed in arguing that they could drop an account and keep the money without justifying it, which was the point here.
Mr. Greenspan suffered further losses to bring and defend on appeal a fruitless case.
His losses appear to have been about $40 of court fees and whatever he valued his time at, for a suit over about $700-800 in withheld revenues. Presumably the time was by far the more significant cost.
Isn't that rather the point he was trying to make, though? The whole case could have been avoided, saving everyone time and money, if Google had just answered a simple question in the first place. Fighting these cases, even if they win a Pyrrhic victory every time, is not a sustainable strategy.
It doesn't matter how many lawyers they've got. For one thing, in most places in the West, if you're in a small claims court or the equivalent then professional lawyers probably won't be allowed. And if your case is large enough to be heard in full court, it's worth hiring your own lawyer, and they're going to drive a pretty obvious hole through any contract of adhesion where the terms are essentially "We can decide arbitrarily that you're in violation and thus refuse to hold up our end of the deal".
...none of them have invalidated the contract in a courtroom thus far AFAIK...
Are you familiar with the case of Aaron Greenspan?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-goo...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-bot...
The key facts as reported appear to be that he did take them to small claims court after they shut down his account and wouldn't explain why, and he won. They then appealed, and they won, but only after identifying two specific ways in which they considered one of his sites did violate their terms (at least one of which is explicitly identified in the wording they use today, though I don't know whether either or both was at the time) which is all he was asking for in the first place.
Net result: Google were probably out far more in time and money than he was, and got a healthy dose of bad press for their behaviour throughout. The lawyers might call it a win, but I bet neither the accountants nor the PR guys did.