I have just been rejected for a Google program that they invited me to join, I wanted to join, and my participation would have made them money.   They called me at odd hours to validate, I returned their calls, left voice mails, but then they said that I didn’t respond and rejected me.  A powerfully frustrating experience.

This wasn’t the first time.  I paid to take a test to become a certified Google Adwords expert.  I passed the test.  They have never (5 years later) responded to any of my attempts to get this acknowledged.  Every survey they send, and every offer for “free advertising coupons” gets a response explaining that they really need to fix their systems.  There is no actual person or group that seems to be responsible for following up once they have your money.  It is particularly ironic since the point of being an adwords expert is to make them more money. 

Most recently, they sent me an invitation to be part of their Google Engage analytics program.  I was really excited, as I use Google Analytics for many of my different charity projects. 

I guess that I should have been surprised that they could not even follow up on an application that they asked me to participate in.  So now, I’m back to trying to create a better analytics tracking mechanism that will work across web and mobile better.

The need to vent aside, it really makes me wonder about how capable their business tracking systems really could be.  My take on Google is that it’s “good enough for free”.  My experience in actually putting money into the equation has been pretty shabby. 

Am I the only one that has run into these problems trying to actually do real business (ie:  not free stuff) with Google?