YouTube user arrested after driving cross-country to threaten Google, didn’t know his wife was taking down his videos

Ben Schoon | Mar 13 2019 - 7:41 am PT

Passion can drive people to do some pretty crazy things, and that definitely seems to be the case with one YouTuber from Maine. Kyle Long was apparently arrested outside of Google’s headquarters in Mountain View for trying to “settle his beef” with the company regarding his YouTube channel which he believed the company had shut down.

NBC News reports that Long travelled from Waterville, Maine to California to talk to Google directly about his YouTube channel which, he believed, the company was trying to shut down. Long was arrested on suspicion of making criminal threats against Google and was held in the local jail with $25,000 bail.

Apparently, Long was mad at Google for taking down his videos which gave instructions on how to boost viewership and earn money off of the platform. What Long didn’t know was that YouTube wasn’t taking down his videos, but rather it was his wife. Long’s father explained that his wife was taking down the videos and eventually disabled the channel because the videos were gibberish.

His wife took it down as soon as he put it up. It didn’t make any sense. It was dumb; it was crazy. He showed it to me and it was most bizarre thing. It wasn’t reality.

On his cross-country trip, Long ran into a state trooper in Iowa after vandalizing a gas station bathroom. The ensuing conversation led to that trooper making a call back to Maine after it “raised concerns.” Long apparently told the trooper that he was on his way to Mountain View and that the shutdown channel was causing him to lose money.

Local police from Long’s hometown also learned that Long had stated that if his “meeting” with Google didn’t go well, he would resort to physical violence. Police officers in Mountain View were then stationed around Google’s headquarters and stopped Long while he was traveling along US Highway 101.