It's very unwise to lie to a service provider when they explicitly ask, especially when setting up an account where money will change hands. That is technically actual fraud.
Google's not gating out under-18-year-olds for fun: they're a business, they'd love to make more money. Contract law in the US forbids people under 18 from entering into broad categories of contract, and Adsense use operates under electronic contract between user and Google where money changes hands in both directions. Google opens themselves up to huge liability if they inadvertently do business with a minor, which is why they're so paranoid about the lock-out.
That would depend on whose laws you were applying. In a lot of places, fraud requires a misrepresentation that's actually material to the transaction, and a court could come down on either side of the question of whether the user's age was material in the necessary way.
> Google opens themselves up to huge liability if they inadvertently do business with a minor, which is why they're so paranoid about the lock-out.
No, they really don't. They might open themselves up to limited liability if they let a minor do something that lost said minor money. They also might not be able to enforce some of the "take it or leave it" provisions of their terms against minors (of course, in a sane legal system they wouldn't be able to enforce those terms against anybody, but you don't see many if any sane legal systems).
But they do not open themselves up to "huge liability".
Nonetheless, they don't choose to take even those small risks. Mostly, I suspect, because the response wouldn't be automatable. Google hates anything that's not automatable, and vehemently resists manually fixing anything. That applies to interacting with adults, too, and to cases where you haven't even actually violated their policies, but the automation happens to be wrong, which happens all the time.
Which is why nobody of any age should be depending on Google.
> especially when setting up an account where money will change hands. That is technically actual fraud
no, that's not fraud. It might be an element of fraud if it was a loophole you were exploiting to use the account for some fraudulent purpose, but fraud requires theft or similar, not just technical violations of terms.
If Google was so worried about this, their AI and behavior analytics can %99.9 know you are underage. They could show a BIG RED alert multiple times about this. Plus, I don't see heavy upload traffic from these young people becoming a liability on their end which is basically free work.
The "under-18-year-olds can't enter into contracts" laws are, broadly speaking, derived historically from child labor protection concerns, and tend to be state-level law.
There's very real risk that legitimizing a contract with a child opens Google up to expensive-to-litigate criminal liability.
Children technically can enter into contracts. But they're voidable contracts, so it's essentially no upside and only downside for those that would contract with them.
Google's not gating out under-18-year-olds for fun: they're a business, they'd love to make more money. Contract law in the US forbids people under 18 from entering into broad categories of contract, and Adsense use operates under electronic contract between user and Google where money changes hands in both directions. Google opens themselves up to huge liability if they inadvertently do business with a minor, which is why they're so paranoid about the lock-out.