Google Applies Double Standard to Political Vendors

Accuracy In Media ^ | November 19, 2003 | William R Alford

[walford]

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Google Applies Double Standard to Political Vendors

By William R Alford
November 19, 2003

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As a commercial entity, the popular search engine Google has joined the esteemed ranks of media and academic organizations that have a responsibility to be objective but instead choose to manage information based upon an apparent ingrained partisan and socio-ideological bias.

Some background:

Early this past summer, Accuracy In Media's Conservative Mall offered Jason Fodeman's book, How to Destroy a Village: What the Clintons Taught a Seventeen Year Old. Soon after our marketing staff placed it into Google's 'sponsored links' [pay-per-click Internet advertising], their staff informed us that they suspended the ad campaign.

A Google 'AdWords Team' e-mail explained that they rejected the book promotion because of "unacceptable content," citing a policy that "does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain 'language that advocates against an individual, group, or organization.'" -- unless the target is conservative, patriotic, Republican, heterosexual, Christian etc. More on this later...

Our marketing staff initially attributed this to a common squeamishness among sales people to political controversy -- it doesn't increase sales and provokes complaints. Fair enough -- there would be no 'anti-anybody' merchandise ads. Given previous success promoting G.W. Bush-oriented items, AIM decided to try a new campaign marketing our Ronald Reagan books and memorabilia.

Imagine our surprise when Google suspended this campaign as well. The Ronald Reagan merchandise did not offend, however. After rehashing their policy proscribing 'advocacy against' anyone, Google informed us that they had browsed other items offered for sale in AIM's website [but NOT promoted on Google]. Google wrote that such items as the "'Bill Lied', 'Impeach Hillary' and 'Forget Buddy, Neuter Clinton' bumper Stickers as well as other shirts, buttons and books on your site are not acceptable."

Reviewing the original message, any of AIM's Web content could be interpreted as subject to Google's approval -- including the articles. Thus when AIM's Notra Trulock 'advocates against' America's "most trusted journalist" Walter Cronkite for denouncing Operation Iraqi Freedom and echoing the Left's tacit support of Saddam - Google could conceivably find such material 'unacceptable' as well.

Being an organization offering political commentary/analysis and selling political merchandise -- there seems to be no way that AIM can utilize such a powerful marketing tool under such strictures. Out of frustration [and to AIM management's disapproval after the fact], this writer sent Google's AdWords Team an e-mail inviting them to browse all of our merchandise and articles. They should then let us know which they would like us to remove. Afterward we would 'get back to them.'

We have recently found, however, that there are some notable exceptions to Google's no 'advocacy against' policy.

A Google search on such keywords as 't-shirt,' 'bumpersticker' and 'Bush' revealed some interesting products offered in the resultant 'Sponsored Links' boxes. [The vendors in question will NOT be given any free advertising in this space.] Examples include t-shirts, bumperstickers and buttons sporting such slogans as 'Gröpenfüerer Schwarzenegger,' 'Flush Rush,' 'different Bush, same bu** sh**.' Some items disparage religious conservatives: 'the Christian Right is neither.' Others mock those who hold to any faith whatsoever: 'religion is a crutch for people who can't think for themselves.'

Google staff found AIM's merchandise lampooning the Clintons and Democrats offensive, but saw no reason to suspend the vendor offering, 'I'm bi-partisan, I'll hug your elephant if you kiss my a**.' Neither have they stopped selling ad space to the merchant hawking bathroom tissue printed with your choice of these smiling faces: the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, the Vice-President, and of course, the President of the United States [labeled 'Bush Wipe'].

Immediately upon discovering this, AIM informed Google of these and other similar items (providing links and pictures), saying in part, "we certainly do not want you to stop allowing the vendors of [such] merchandise to participate in the Google AdWords program. Our position is if they are allowed to do so, then so should we."

Google responded by digging in their heels: They reminded us that "a different set of laws and regulations apply to commercial speech (advertising) than to the search results we show when you do a Google search. As a business, Google must make decisions about where we draw the line in regards [sic] to the advertising we accept, both from a legal and company values perspective."

Further, "ad text, site content, or keywords should not be anti related." Google offered no reaction to the above-described 'anti-related' items, however. Continuing, they wrote, "In order for us to allow your ad to run, you have to remove all apparel, books, bumper stickers, buttons, merchandise, collectibles, CD's, videos, etc. that in any way advocate against any individual, group or organization."

This means that these items - whether they are directly promoted on Google or not - must no longer be offered for sale to the public online. The Internet is the major means by which these items are sold. Many of them are very popular and comprise a significant proportion of our inventory.

Providing a link, Google advised us to review their 'AdWords Editorial Guidelines.' The pertinent statement in its entirety: "Your ad cannot contain offensive or inappropriate language." And how does Google define 'offensive or inappropriate?' "As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site."

Not explicitly defined, this 'discretion' is completely arbitrary. Google's AdWords Team may not consciously be discriminating against AIM because of our political perspective. It is entirely possible that items such as those clearly anti-Bush may provoke chuckles for Google's staff, but when confronted with products poking fun at THEIR sacred cows... well THAT'S 'offensive.' Deliberate or not, BIAS is still BIAS.

We certainly understand that the First Amendment prohibits only governmental free speech restriction. It does not obligate a private entity to provide a forum for another's free speech. However, Google must be impartial in order to retain credibility as the premier gateway to the Internet.

William R Alford is a Government & International Politics/Electronic Journalism student at George Mason University in Fairfax VA. He can be contacted via email at william_r_alford@yahoo.com

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[walford]

I never suspected Google would show bias. Well, they messed up and provided me an easy topic to write about this week. They also hurt us financially.

[Cultural Jihad]

Well, it's a free country. Build your own search engine and then you can have all the ads on it you want to.

[ilgipper]

...and stop using Google, because they are bigoted against conservatives. This hurts me because I use them daily.

[Quilla]

FWIW, I believe Al Gore works in some capacity for Google.

[jimkress]

OK. What are alternatives to google that do not attempt to suppress Conservative, Christian views?

[haywoodwebb]

I sent an email with my feelings toward their policy and informing that I will no longer be using their service, unless they change their stance.

[freetradenotfree]

Well, it's a free country.

Free the Government take 40% to 50% , 40% to 50% of your Income, that not Free

[Blood of Tyrants]

Teoma Search Engine

[sarasota]

Same here. What's the alternative?

[Dr.Deth]

FWIW, I believe Al Gore works in some capacity for Google.

Al Gore invented Google!

[Yardstick]

FOX ought to do a search engine. Someone call Rupert.

[TheOtherOne]

They banned some gun / singal flare ads I had for the same reason. Even when I advertised other items from the same web site, they said they were sold on the linked site and banned those ads. Sucks, but that is their right as a private business.

[glorgau]

Have they tried Overture? They are the big search engine competition for Google right now.

[w1andsodidwe]

Yes they are very biased. A couple of week ago, I was making a trip to the mountain town of Arnold, California. I was hunting for a city site, but all I could get was sites mentioning Arnold's California. Lol.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

So who is there besides Yahoo and Aol?

[Quilla]

Al Gore invented Google!

How could I have forgotten!! /slapping forehead

"Mr. Gore is no stranger to corporate boardrooms. He and his business partner, Joel Hyatt, a co-founder of Hyatt Legal Services, are developing a cable news channel. Mr. Gore also serves on the board of directors of Apple Computer Inc. and is an adviser to Google Inc."

Source: Gore Signs On to New Campaign (on board waterless urinal corp)

[MrConfettiMan]

http://www.metacrawler.com

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

http://www.search.com/

Above url is a good search engine

[MrConfettiMan]

The above search engine submits your query to a number of different "search engines" available on the 'net and provides you with the results.

[TXnMA]

So who is there besides Yahoo and Aol?

Alta Vista, for one... Works just fine for me.

[petitfour]

It pains me also, but I shall endeavor to find an acceptable alternative.

[conservonator]

Search KW "liberal" and moveon.org comes up with an adword (Sponsored Links) box on the right of the serp's

No disparaging content there....

[jpl]

I had no idea Google had decided to take sides in the Cultural Wars. Another company to put on my s**t list. From now on I use only the alternative search engines.

[myself6]

Is there an email address I can write to them at?

I need to inform them that as of today I am configuring my corporate firewall to block ALL access to google because of its biased and misleading business practices. I also plan on letting all the other conservative IT guy's I talk to know about this and consult them on how to insure that google never gets another hit from their corporations.

Its really simple. Just create a rule that redirects all traffic destined for google by url or ip or both to ANOTHER search engine. This will keep the user happy and deny google your company’s patronage.

[GovernmentShrinker]

They also don't accept sponsored links from any firearms/ammo dealers (including FFLs).

It's high time that people who are sick of this bias band together and promote an alternative search engine. Anybody want to weigh in on what the best alternative is?

[GovernmentShrinker]

How about developing some software that blocks all of Google's sponsored links, but retains the regular search results? Distributing this widely as shareware could put some real pressure on Google to change their policy. Their sponsored link buyers wouldn't be happy as word spread about increasing use of such a program. And the vast majority of their sponsored link buyers don't have the slightest interest in seeing certain political positions skewered by Google's censors.

[GovernmentShrinker]

I don't use any site that requires me to install software. I just tried to get to their main search page, and it won't function at all without installing Flash Player. No matter how many times I clicked "no", the stupid "Do you want to install Flash Player" window popped right back up. I'm at work and couldn't install it if I wanted to (can't install any software -- IT staff has to do it), and if I was at home on my dial-up connection, I wouldn't want to because of the time involved.

[Cobra Scott]

I sent an email with my feelings toward their policy and informing that I will no longer be using their service, unless they change their stance.

And in doing so verified your email address so they can tie it to their spam database. If they parsed spyware from you, they probably made a profit off of you now.

[walford]

My apologies for not responding sooner, It was published last night. I found that out while at the computer in a media class, so I surruptitiously posted it during. Just got into the office.

Let me address a few questions:

Is there an email address I can write to them at?

There is a link on the word 'Google' at the beginning and end of this piece.

"I sent an email with my feelings toward their policy and informing that I will no longer be using their service, unless they change their stance."

And in doing so verified your email address so they can tie it to their spam database. If they parsed spyware from you, they probably made a profit off of you now.

Don't be afraid to contact Google. You can always use a 'Yahoo' e-mail addy which can be filtered or just created for a single purpose only to be abandoned after being overwhelmed with spam.

Insofar as 'spyware' and whatnot, there are proxy filters. Even if there is some way they can punish you, Google doesn't deserve to have merchants as customers if they are going to be politically selective. They are flat-out abusing their position and shouldn't get away with it. They are no longer the gateway to the Internet for me anymore. I want ALL of the info.

Also in the above-referenced link there are phone numbers and mailing addresses...

At this time, AIM is looking for a search engine for our marketing promotions that is unfiltered by Algore... Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[walford]

someone just e-mailed me a link to a website outlining their own Google horror story and what they did about it:

http://www.valleyfirearms.com/Googlesucks.htm

"...Because all of my keywords were obviously related to firearms and ammunition, Google.com decided to pull my ad campaign from their Adwords program. The funny thing is, the Google "keyword tool", which is designed to help advertisers pick key words to drive traffic to the web site, picked all my keywords for me. Then when I used the keywords Google suggested, they canceled my ad campaign. Porn is okay with them, but god, not guns! Hypocritical bastards!..."

To that I would add that they have no problem allowing ANTI-gun stuff into their sponsored links. A personal favorite is as a pink button that reads, "I'm a gay, liberal vegetarian and I want your gun"

[ilgipper]

how do those AdWords work? Does Google make revenue from the click-through, or from the page impression. Most of google results come from their web-crawlers, I think, which not driving revenue. The sponsorships and AdWords are paid for.

I can't imagine life with out Google, especially since they also drive the search for Yahoo and other major search engines. I am going to just avoid clicking on sponorships and paid-for positions.

[walford]

These guys know what they are doing when it comes to marketing on the Internet. I recommend them [this is an internet marketing forum]:
http://jimworld.com/apps/webmaster.forums/action::active/

[ps they were good for tech info. I posted my initial problems with them, they were sympathetic, but couldn't help. (I didn't know that Google was politically discriminating against us at the time.)]

[walford]

This is a post from a series of e-mails that merit viewing by the entire class:

David R-
I can't seem to verify any of what you discuss in your AIM article. Could you please describe your Google searches So that I might find what you found?

walford -
doing a search on the phrase 'bumper sticker' will yield two sites, http://www.stickergiant.com http://www.bumpertalk.com

I expected Google to hurriedly change this, especially since it was posted it on Free Republic but I just tested this and it still will yield the same results.

David R -
Just a note, for what it's worth -- both sites advertise product with a conservative bent as well.

walford -
Oh, yes there are a few pro-conservative/republican/christian items. There Are no corresponding anti-demo/liberal, etc. except for one token 'annoy a liberal, be happy.' No balance. Google thinks that it is big enough to get away with this.

David R-
Yeah, apart from all the other ones:

"Conservatives hate what people do. Liberals hate who people are."
"Aids... Drugs... Abortion... Don't liberals just kill you?"
"Vote for Ted Kennedy 'A Blonde in Every Pond'"
"Save the Baby Seals Club a liberal instead"
"Vote Vichy -- Re-elect Tom d'Aschle"

Let's see, these associate liberals with... murder, hate, and nazi-collaboration and advise physical assault. Personally, I take the assault as humorous, but honestly, don't they pretty well make "Flush Rush" look awfully tame? And if there's a bias regarding religion, you might take a look at the BumperTalk site.

The first major category is "Christian" (with no other religions featured) and includes nine featured subcategories. I haven't checked out all of the stickers, but I haven't found any there that are anti-Christian.

Sticker Giant has a "zone" dedicated to Christians. The anti-religious fare there is listed under "Religious comments" as a category in the "Social-Political" zone. While the "comments" section is pretty overwhelmingly negative regarding religion, the wholly positive Christian zone is more prominent.

I am perfectly willing to grant that there are some items between the sites that might be rude, but you'll have to do a lot more work to convince me of any sort of real bias at these sites.

walford-
It is Google that is biased. That is the issue here. Personally, I think that all bumper stickers are tacky, and that any idea that can be completely contained on a bumpersticker is likely to be piffle.

These examples that you cite may indicate that Google is inconsistent and sloppy about their bias, but it certainly doesn't prove that they're fair by any means.

This still does not excuse yanking us and allowing them. It does not excuse yanking sites promoting gun rights but allowing "I'm a gay liberal vegetarian and I want your gun" buttons.

[walford]

Given that part of Free Republic’s function is to serve as an archive for important topics, here are some other important issues that have arisen over Google and its dominance as Internet gateway. Even leaving politics aside, Google is arrogant in its current position. It bullies the little guy and punishes those who don’t tow the line. It is flippant about peoples privacy [try putting your phone number into the Google search box, if it is listed in the phone book, your name and address will be displayed by Google for all the world to see.] It is also beginning to neglect the non-commercial sector.

It is always dangerous for any singular entity to have so much power. Many of Google’s foibles are simply borne out of a laziness and carelessness that always attends being the only game in town.

http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html
“…Google is easily top dog. They provide about 75 percent of the external referrals for most websites. If you count Google's partners as part of the mix (particularly Yahoo and AOL), this figure is closer to 85 percent. There is no point in putting up a website apart from Google. It's do or die with Google. If we're all very lucky, one of the other three will offer some competition within a year or two. If we're not lucky, we will be uploading our websites to Google's servers by then, much like the bloggers do at blogger.com (which was bought by Google in 2003). It would mean the end of the web as we know it…”

http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism/20011031_eff_usa_patriot_analysis.html
“…Be careful what you put in that Google search. The government may now spy on web surfing of innocent Americans, including terms entered into search engines, by merely telling a judge anywhere in the U.S. that the spying could lead to information that is "relevant" to an ongoing criminal investigation. The person spied on does not have to be the target of the investigation. This application must be granted and the government is not obligated to report to the court or tell the person spied upon what it has done...”

http://www.emnme.com/google/
My Biased Ranking - Google
“…On the first two days my ad and position on searches were great! My site was everywhere even in Yahoo! So, I informed the web community about it. Why pay more to get your site submitted by software when you can pay $5 and invest 5 minutes to be listed immediately with full guarantee?…

…In indexing my posts here and there, Google helped promote my boycott call of a major paying sponsor, Oakley. Read all about my petition to recall Oakley products here.Oakley found out about my recall Oakley product links that appear next to theirs and pressured Google to do what is necessary to get rid of my damaging posts.Google influenced search results and manually removed emnme.com and any site related to me or that can be associated to me, to protect Oakley and its affiliates…

…I did not see my ad and my website again on the result pages. I even went to every page just to see where my site was positioned. Reviewing as far as page 49 of search results! Never in my entire life had I looked for something that deep. Yet, lo, I did not see any links to my site!…”

http://jimworld.com/apps/webmaster.forums/action::thread/thread::1064825360/forum::googleadwords/
Google Adwords Ignores Click Fraud
“…I've been using adwords almost since day one and run a large amount of campaigns and adgroups containing hundreds, if not thousands, of keywords. I do affiliate marketing for the most part and promote many different products in various industries.

A few months ago I setup a new campaign promoting some anti-spam software. Everything went well and the campaign was very predictable with an average ctr of 1.5 - 3%. Then I went away on vacation. I was camping so I didn't have access to a computer. When I got back and checked my campaigns I saw that while I was gone this particular campaign had jumped from its predictible 1.5 - 3% ctr to an abnormal 35 - 40% ctr. At the same time there was no increase in traffic to my sponsor, or an increase in sales. I immediately concluded that a competitor had used a hitbot on me to drain my pockets, since I was one of the top bidders on the keywords I was targeting. The increase in traffic was obviously fake and it had cost me a few thousand dollars extra over a 10 day period.

I immediately contacted Google about this. After talking to an unsurprisingly incompetent customer service rep, and struggling to explain the concept of a hitbot and artificial clicks, I was told that there would be an investigation which would take about 3 weeks. That was almost 3 months ago. I have heard nothing from Google. I have sent several emails asking what the status of this investigation is and have not received any replies. It is obvious that Google doesn't care about click fraud or its customers….”

http://www.brassroots.org/google.html
Google Search Engine Refuses Business from Gun and Knife Advertisers

http://www.petitiononline.com/Pt21z5X/petition.html
Google's Policy Against Gun Related Advertisers
[You may have to enter ‘google’ into the search box and scroll through the alphabetical listing of petitions to find the above-named petition.]

http://www.searchking.com/news/sknews.htm

SEARCHKING DOESN' T BUDGE IN LAWSUIT AGAINST GOOGLE
"The case is about Google's attempt to squelch competition by targeting businesses and arbitrarily reducing their PageRank or search status. So they've restored it for now. Next month, what's to stop them from reducing my ranking again?"

[walford]

http://www.miislita.com/searchito/business-scene.html

"11-21-GOOGLE - Accuracy In Media Claims Google is Biased. Well, Duuuh! Finally, someone at Accuracy in Media (AIM) took a stand and denounced Google biased practices. Probably Google will claim tweaking ads/search results to their heart needs is freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. Unfortunately AIM guys and most consumer protection organizations did nothing during the SearchKing vs Google case. In that case, Google claimed that tweaking its PageRank algorithm (used in all Google's free and paid services) against a particular Web property (SearchKing) was freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment since "PageRank is an opinion not to be taken true or false". For your information, AIM guys, (1) Google filed for a patent on PageRank and (2) The California Supreme Court in a case involving Nike determined that the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech of individuals not of corporations. Besides, since when an opinion can be patented? Now AIM folks come with this since it hits home very close, right? Shame on both of you, Google and AIM. Too little, too late. You cannot pick a fight for "accuracy" only when is convenient; right?"

First of all, we didn't know about the Search King case until we found ourselves discriminated against politically for our merchandise. We can't catch them all.

Whomever the anonymous writer is could have let us know. We could have investigated and wrote about it. You could have written a story yourself. If it was well-written and backed up with solid evidence, it could have been published as a guest column on our site. We have a small staff and welcome any help in finding stories.

AIM is not a consumer protection organization. It is a media watchdog specializing in political bias skewing news coverage. We do not press for lawsuits or government regulations to mitigate against the effects of bias and institutional arrogance. Our main objective is to expose.

Unlike the media/academic [and apparently commercial] elites, we trust the audience to have ALL of the information and to know what to do about what they learn.

To say 'shame on AIM and Google' as if there is a moral equivalency is a very shallow evaluation indeed.

[walford]

Here's another beef about Google for the archive:

http://www.searchengineguide.com/lloyd/2003/1125_bl1.html
Been Gazumped by Google? Trying to make Sense of the "Florida" Update! By Barry Lloyd 2003-11-25

"...It appeared to us and to several other respected names (though hotly disputed by others) that some sort of over-SEOd filter had been applied to check if overt SEO had been done for that particular phrase. It was as if Google were checking to see if external links to the site included the phrase, on-page optimisation was being done for the phrase and even if the domain included the phrase. If the density of the optimisation, both on and off the page, appeared too artificial, then a filter was tripped and down went the page - solely for that phrase.

Google had never looked favourably on abuse of their systems and many established SEOs looked upon this algo tweak as a way of Google getting rid of the abuses of links and stopping the scrambling for getting (and sometimes buying) links including your required anchor text from other high PR, but probably irrelevant to your subject, sites. It seemed to make sense.

On Friday, 21st November, Google decided to tighten the "filter". All hell broke loose as tens of thousands of sites disappeared from positions they had held (in some cases) for years. We noticed some of our client sites plummeting for their major key phrase from being #1 to total invisibility. Yet this was only in highly competitive areas, not for their secondary phrases. These sites were, in most cases, not highly optimised, had not sought reciprocal links but had achieved their rankings through being on the web for 4 or 5 years. The bad news was that their company name and domain included the key phrase, sites (including directories) linking to those sites included the key phrase in their links and Google interpreted this as over-optimisation and down they plunged. In many areas all the top 20 ranking sites disappeared, including industry leaders, to be replaced by educational sites, news review sites, government sites, major shopping portals or directories. Something major had happened - but what?..."

[walford]

--- daniel wrote:

Hi William,

Just wanted to comment on your Google article that you failed to mention that ads run on Google immediately, being an Adwords Advertiser I know there is a delay in ads being reviewed so it's possible to see ads that would violate their guidelines for a short time.

For us it was a VERY short time, sometimes within the same day we'd have our AdWord campaign quashed by Google.

I think, being in all FAIRNESS, and ACCURACY to them, you should have mentioned that. I did a search on 'Bush' - No ads are running. I did a search on 'tshirt' - went through the top 8 AdWords ads and saw no such tshirts you talked about. Care to explain?
Try this search:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=bumper+sticker&btnG=Google+Search
It will result in these two links:

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.stickergiant.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc%3F%26Affiliate%3Dgoogle_test&sa=l&ai=AkgLyhqOy_0fHEiMLKadi_Wgkwn1jv2pBqWIhGwwBQ6EAQb4ABgwBYaBA&num=7

http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/adclick?adurl=http://www.bumpertalk.com&sa=l&ai=A_o10hqOy_0fHEiMLKadi_WQzuG7AVDZl8oahEaADIApTAAthDEACIgpFLP-i_PA&num=8

[I would like to place pictures of some of the items here, but don't want to mess with copyrighted materials.] 

Your site strives to show accurate news - the funny this is, you article wasn't. I use to have cigars on my site which I DID NOT ADVERTISE and would receive disapprovals for. Trust me, I have written a dozen emails complaining about that but that's the policy. It's on my site - so I removed them. I did a search on 'cohiba' and there are cigar shops up on. I write emails daily complaining,  and the ads are up there because they have not yet been reviewed, and are then taken down - the advertiser then creates new ads and they are back - obviously it's a bad cycle, and something needs to be done, but that's the price they pay in order to allow advertisers to have there ads run instantly. Overture does not do this...you have to wait up to a week. I don't think that is Google's fault.

Everyone wants to take a cheap shot at the guy at the top. The fact of the matter is I would have never found your article if it wasn't for Google News. Personally speaking, I think that AdWords is the cheapest most effecient advertising available. And Google, as much as you may hate them, has made the world a better place, and information easier to find.

I look forward to your response.

Daniel V

Well, this 'efficient' advertising is not available to AIM and to a number of other merchants as well.

Insofar about cigars sold by others that were allowed to be in AdWords while yours were not. As mentioned in the article, we sent Google an e-mail, providing links and pics of items that violated their policy. As of this writing, they are still coming up in sponsored links -- click on the ones above and see for yourself.

Google is sloppy and inconsistent about its policies, because it feels insulated from competition, much like the old Ma Bell back in the bad old days. I invite you to look at the links and excerpts in the other messages posted in this thread. Cheap shot indeed.
By the way, my article has been revised to reflect some info learned from others who had constructive criticism:
http://www.aim.org/publications/briefings/2003/nov19.html

[Quix]

HOW HIDEOUS.

Isn't YAHOO also liberal?

What are we to do?

Is there any possibility of a court case?

This is beyond absurd.

[Quix]

THANKS. I HAVE A SHORT CUT TO THAT SITE NOW ON MY DESKTOP.

What are the philosophical leanings of this site of yours?

Neutral? Conservative? What?

[Quix]

Sounds good to me.

[NH Liberty]

"OK. What are alternatives to google that do not attempt to suppress Conservative, Christian views?"

What about "Dogpile"? Has anybody heard anything negative about them being biased against Conservatives/Christians?

[Paul C. Jesup]

Well, it's a free country. Build your own search engine and then you can have all the ads on it you want to.

I am sick of this anti-right BS, lets force THEM to be bias against socialists for once.

[walford]

check this one out from a webmaster running what appears to be an auction site:
http://jimworld.com/apps/webmaster.forums/action::thread/thread::1059067340/forum::googleadwords/

He was promoting cars and found one guy was selling a pack of cancer sticks. Anything tobacco is prohibited in Google AdWords -- mostly.

I added this comment:

--- Google shouldn't be in the Internet nanny business. They are not good at it. As long as it's legal, it should be allowed advertisement.

There are content filters that people can choose to install and set their own parameters. If they can allow porno to be sponsored they shouldn't block ads advocating guns, tobacco and making fun of Bubba.

[Cultural Jihad]

I am sick of this anti-right BS, lets force THEM to be bias against socialists for once.

Speaking of anti-right BS, let us know when you get the 1st Amendment repealed, then you can pass all the "force THEM to be biased as *I* want them to be biased" laws you want to. By the way, the THEM are your fellow Americans who have a right not to be forced to spout your words for you.

[the invisib1e hand]

i had hoped...that the phenomena known as "google" was run be people who were above that.

I'm disappointed, but there's other stuff to be encouraged about.

[Quix]

I mostly agree.

I do suspect that if I owned Google, I'd have some censorship policies, too. Would I be as off the wall arbitrary as they are? I hope not. But I'd likely allow a whole lot more ragging of Shrillery than I would of Bush.

I think I'd have trouble allowing absolutely only one side of a political perspective unless maybe it was infanticide.

[walford]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1030770/posts?page=6#6

[Paul C. Jesup]

Speaking of anti-right BS, let us know when you get the 1st Amendment repealed, then you can pass all the "force THEM to be biased as *I* want them to be biased" laws you want to. By the way, the THEM are your fellow Americans who have a right not to be forced to spout your words for you.

As if you know what the 1st Amendment means.

Socialists believe that only they have the right to free speech, my responce is that because of that belief, they do not deserve the right to free speech.

[krunkygirl]

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