At Topix, we've been working with Google since day 1. While we do compete with one of their products, more importantly they are a great partner - both a terrific source of traffic and, through the AdSense program, our main monetization partner on the site.
Like any partner in life, there are good days and, yes, bad days. The past couple of days have been bad days. For some reason, where normally lucrative Adsense usually reside on the site, the past couple of days non-lucrative public service announcements have been living. I'm all for charity, but, in a word, arrrgghhh. And you wonder why I am losing my hair.
In any event, our friends in Mountain View tell me they have folks working on this - and I am confident it will be resolved shortly. In the meantime, it gives me lots of time to contemplate the benefits and detriments of outsourcing your advertising to a third party.....more on that later.