Google Refuses Business from Gun and Knife Advertisers

Sent them an email this afternoon. Here's there reply (received this evening):

Hi Michael,

Thank you for your email. Google believes strongly in freedom of expression and therefore offers broad access to content across the web without censoring results. At the same time, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site, as noted in our advertising terms and conditions. Please note that the decisions we make concerning advertising in no way affect the search results we deliver. We will continue to show search results for guns and related products.

We appreciate your comments on this issue, which will help inform our future policy discussions. Thank you for taking the time to contact us.

Regards,
The Google Team

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Interest: "

When I heard you refused ads for weapons, I thought I'd check to see if you were avoiding all "controversial" ads. But here is a "sponsored link" for abortion providers. Please reconsider your ban on "some" advertising.

So you got any suggestions for a new search engine specifically one that will search usenet postings?

Unlike Dell and K-mart, who's competition is as good or better, google's competition is so far behind there is no one to turn to. Heck, half it's competition is "powered by google" or does a google search and restates the results. I click the google search button at least 40 times a day and need a good usenet archive. Since google took over deja, I haven't seen any usenet search engines.

If anyone knows of one please post here

-Tom

I got a similar reply.

I did some digging and found some information that seems prudent. It seems that a concern of Google may be the fact that the long arm of litigation for firearm related lawsuits may be the problem.

They have no problem returning search results for gun related websites (No fee), but they may be trying to avoid any potential lawsuits.

I posed the question on a different forum and there was an interesting response:
Why doesn't FR allow PAID advertising?

Although I believe the answer is obvious, it does bring up an interesting perspective. If FR allowed paid advertising, they would be 'for-profit' and thus be in-line for potential lawsuits. Fast forward to Google, and I have a slight understanding of their thoughts.

Make no mistake, Google still shows Search Engine results for all gun-related websites, but the fact that they won't accept money to advertise for gun-related sites...well..I understand because of the potential lawsuits.

Not that I agree. I just think Google is too 'pure', and looking to avoid controversy through lawsuits.

I run a website that is dedicated to fishing. When I tried putting up some information on political charged activities...well my readers expressed disapproval. I took it down. It was NOT the forum for that type of 'thoughts'.

I can't fault the readers or myself...it was just 'out of place'. I wasn't concerned about lawsuits, I WAS concerned about losing readers because of mixing politics with a political neutral forum.

Does that make me AGAINST politics? Hardly so. I just recognized more harm than good.

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