Comments on: Overly Sensitive?

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 08:37:27 +0000

The tyranny of AdSense, huh? Here's an idea from the redoubtable Robert Anton Wilson: replace all the bad words with google, sergei, larry, kleiner perkins, etc.

"Insurgents today googled thirtysix civilians in a residential neighbourhood in Iraq. In other news, the memoirs of John Holmes, brutally titled "Thirteen-Inch Larry", were published today, beginning with the immortal words "I have kleiner perkinsed more than twenty thousand women."

By: JG

JG — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 00:29:42 +0000

Hasn't there always been a conflict between advertising and economics on the one hand, and press/truth/unbiased information on the other? Advertisers have never wanted to appear next to content that reflected poorly on the advertisers.

This is just a new twist on an old problem. It won't be solved by switching to another ad network; it is inherent in any system that places content together with ads.

Back in the day, I always naively hoped that Google would go the Consumer Reports route and not accept advertising, as part of its goal of organizing the world's info. I even wrote a passionate email to Google once, a long time ago when ads first started appearing, telling them that I would become a paid subscriber if they would only keep their business ad-free.

You can see how far that got me.

By: john

john — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 21:05:17 +0000

This isn’t just about publishers. I doubt there are many advertisers out there who see contextual placements next to rape articles as prime real estate. Google’s algorithm might not be perfect, but you can bet they are erring on the side of caution. They know where they money comes from.

By: Errol

Errol — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 20:19:44 +0000

1. "Don't be evil" becomes more meaningless all the time.
2. This also shows the weakness of relaying on technology to understand the context of text on a page.
3. Drives home the message that you should never rely on one source for your revenue.
4. Google needs to better communicate with publishers.
5. Lot's of resentment is growing under the surface for Google, and people will jump ship.
6. There will always be another ad network waiting to capture that publisher network.
7. The balance will tip back to content owners in time.
8. Google is nothing without access to publishers content.
9. Search will become just another tool as other search engines catch up with Google. So its publisher network will become more important.
10. Competition will force Google to improve, just like it's doing to Microsoft, Yahoo, ASK, Amazon and Ebay. Content owners wins in the end.