I’m the person who got banned. And just to be clear: the only reason I have my account back is because 404 Media covered it. Nobody else would touch the story because it happened to a nobody. There are probably a lot of “nobodies” in this thread who might someday need a reporter like Emanuel Maiberg to actually step in. I’m grateful he did.

The dataset had been online for six years. In my appeal I told Google exactly where the data came from — they ignored it. I was the one who reported it to C3P, and that’s why it finally came down. Even after Google flagged my Drive, the dataset stayed up for another two months.

So this idea that Google “did a good thing” and 404 somehow did something wrong is just absurd.

Google is abusing its monopoly in all kinds of ways, including quietly wiping out independent developers: https://medium.com/@russoatlarge_93541/déjà-vu-googles-using...