I think that's the parent's point: that you cannot afford to burn bridges with Google, even when they are wrong. Speaks to their power.
> Google asked them to stop advertising for one category of products.
I read it as Google asking them to stop advertising through Adwords as long as their site carried the products in question, even if the ads weren't for those specific products. If your interpretation is correct, however, I would agree with your conclusion.
Perhaps the OP can clarify.
If this is true, it's completely crazy. How does Google think they can tell people what products to sell on their own shops??
Then I would completely agree with what the OP did, of course. In fact, there really was no other way.
“I am still waiting on an answer to my reply where I asked for a universal enforcement of the policy OR we allow knife depot back online. I replied and said, I refuse to tell knife-depot they need to remove a product category that 7 other competitors are advertising & selling the same products.” I then named each domain, called out the double standard, and requested that they state the clear differences that allows these competitors to serve & knife depot to be suspended. Still waiting on this reply.“
That email was sent over a month ago.
They don't. They tell you that if you want to advertise with them then you can't sell that stuff. Big difference.
The problem is that Google is heading into monopoly territory - the same as MS back in the 90s, same as all the old telecomms companies, etc. At some point in the near future they'll be hit with anti-monopoly legislation, not sure whether it'll be the EU or US that does it first, but I don't think it's far off.
They're trying not to burn bridges, which is good business. But it's true Google has a monopoly on online ads, which should not be allowed to continue unchallenged. Don't like Dell? Buy Lenovo. Don't like AdWords? Die.
On the other hand, the strategy of the OP is questionable. Google asked them to stop advertising for one category of products. It's admirable to have chosen the high route of stopping to do business with Google altogether, but it wasn't the only option. They could have continued to advertise for all their other products on AdWords, and then cross/up-sell customers to the forbidden fruits once these users got to their site.