Jon von Tetzchner, the co-founder and CEO of the company that makes the Vivaldi web browser has taken to the Vivaldi Team Blog in order to lash out at Google and says the search company is in a position to be regulated. In the post, he explains how he helped Google get off the ground and how they came to suspend Vivaldi’s AdWords account after Tetzchner criticised Google’s tracking on Wired.
According to Tetzchner, Vivaldi’s AdWords account has finally been re-activated following a three-month ban. The ban was enforced just two days after Tetzchner criticised the company’s tracking policies in an article on Wired. Detailing what happened after the ban, Tetzchner said:
“When we reached out to Google to resolve the issue, we got a clarification masqueraded in the form of vague terms and conditions, some of which, they admitted themselves, were not a “hard” requirement. In exchange for being reinstated in Google’s ad network, their in-house specialists dictated how we should arrange content on our own website and how we should communicate information to our users"
"After almost three months of back-and-forth, the suspension to our account has been lifted, but only when we bent to their requirements.”
Tetzchner topped off the post by saying that the company has turned into a “bully” since he first met Brin and Page years ago. More importantly, he called for regulation against Google to get the company “back to the straight and narrow” because he feels they are engaging in anti-competitive behaviour.
Source: Vivaldi