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Google AdWords And Ethics Issues
trystanu writes "The Washington Post reports that Google 'will stop accepting advertising from unlicensed pharmacies that have used the Internet to sell millions of doses of narcotics and prescription drugs without medical supervision', following both Yahoo and Microsoft's similar moves last month. The head of Google's U.S. AdWords branch maintains it's not just for the money but that they want their searchers to have the ads most relevant to what they're looking for. It's quite clear some advertisers are using the front door to spam Google rankings. Are some of the 100,000 advertisers now signed up for Adwords tarnishing Google's image at a delicate time?"
Plenty of sites block or blocked porn in one form or another. They have the right to refuse money from anyone.
Or so I would hope.
They're going to exercise more care about who they sell ad space to, not excise the sellers from the results. Two totally different things- and it's the ad space sales that they have to take actual responsibility for, since they're being paid...
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Of course this is tarnishing google's image. This is basically the same thing that has happened to every single search engine. Yahoo was a great search engine in its time. They started getting millions of hits a day, and they decided to sell space on the site. Then, yahoo sold ranking on the engine, and you start having skewed results. Finally, People stop coming because of the pop-ups and bad search results. This isn't a great position for google.
And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
Nowhere to them claim to be unfiltered or unrestricted. They don't take ads for a number of other categories including guns. They also filter out sites they feel are fraudulent in trying to gain higher pagerank. So, where is this unfiltered and unrestricted Google?
If someone is going to be stupid enough to attach a big red light to their forehead saying "Hi, I'm doing something illegal right here!", why not let them hang themselves?
Now that people are starting to exploit googles' page ranking system on a regular basis and since google is having to bow to legal pressure and thereby lose their outsider "street cred"...they're in the exact spot that yahoo was in in 1999.
All they need now is a half-assed web hosting service.
How many times are we going to see this repeated online until we learn that a jack-of-all-trades really IS master of none?
I don't think the problem of buying cheap drugs from Canada/Mexico is the whole piece. Counterfeit drugs are a real problem. The are plenty of mail order drug companies that have been featured on TV. Quite a few politicians are still supporting state programs that import from Canada and/or mandate discounts from the Big Drug Companies. From an ethical standpoint, I find the prices drug corporations rake in on their patented drugs more revolting than the RIAA. My impression is that the drug companies spend more money on marketing than they do on R&D, despite their B.S. excuse that mandatory discounts will cut their R&D budget.
This is the wackiest conspiracy theory I've seen all day.
How exactly are the big pharmaceutical companies "leaning on" Google? Talk of Google's IPO has included mention of the company's value, which is several billion dollars. They aren't a small company that anybody can just push around. The only "leaning" tactic I can think of that would work would be a fleet of armored cars, loaded with green paper cargo, driving to Google's headquarters and unloading.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
When I do a search for something (Simcity 4 strategies this weekend for instance), I don't want the first 4 pages to be links to stores where I can buy the Prima guide. If I want that, I'll go to froogle.
And yeah, so what if most users don't know its there. If that's the case, make the first link that's returned say something to the effect of "Were you looking for something to BUY?" If so, click here. You get the idea.
Or add froogle as a tab on the front page, with a bubble that tells users what it is.
Anything to make searches for information return links to just that, not 2000 mom and pop websites that link to amazon.
Are some of the 100,000 advertisers now signed up for Adwords tarnishing Google's image at a delicate time?
No. It's Google's own fault for tarnishing its own image. They have control of how they function and others have merely taken advantage of it. Google allowed it to continue until now, when they realized problems were in the making.
But then again, tarnishing its image towards whom? Advertisers, users of Google, the government, or everyone?
If people want to buy pills without a prescription, then by all means let them. What's the big deal?
I've been lookin' at some of those sites lately because I would like some Ambien. I've had sleeping issues for years now and doctors are very reluctant to prescribe them to me because they're "too addictive", which is total BS. They might be, but I don't have addictive personality. The best sleep I've had in my life has been while on those pills. Considering it's my sleep being affected, I really don't see the problem with buying 'em online. It's not like I'm buying Oxycontin and getting doped up.
Who's Google to step in and play the police?
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Direct-to-consumer advertising of drugs, which is what these adwords are, is extremely tightly regulated in the US. It was only legalized recently, under strict controls, and is still illegal in many (most?) jurisdictions. Some people think that any DTC advertising is a bad idea.
If you publish an ad for a drug, and the FDA didn't sign off on it first, you're breaking the law. Google is almost certainly required to do this -- I'm amazed that they got away with it for so long.
Are the TV networks unethical if they refuse to take huge fines from the FCC to run ads for illegal products?
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
As you say, when one-person companies are paying 50 cents per click, the idea of somebody clicking away at their advert can get quite insulting.
Not, of course, that anybody is above "spending" their competitors' money with the occasional click on a google ad-word for a competitive query.
Note to google: you need to download the list of open proxies every day, and refuse adwords impressions from IP addresses on that list!
Or just respond to a click with a portscan. If you don't mind being a little unpopular...
I run a price comparison site for online pharmacies, I do run a private label online pharmacy (you set your own prices, you host your site, someone else does the customer service and the shipping), and it makes me wonder time to time.
WHY?
Obviously people buy drugs online, and the pharmacies pay a decent commission, so running a fairly complex site with content (like real price comparisons) gives a good ranking, generate clicks, and brings some $$ to the house.
Is it RIGHT? (the right thing to do)
That's what makes me think sometimes. You guys might think that people buy tons of prozac and tons of painkillers to get high on it (eg. abusing substances), however looking at my reports I can see, that most of the products sold are "viagra type", "quit smoking" and weight loss - and I have a feeling, that these people might get a decent doctor's prescription, because they are fat, and they smoke, and they have erection problems, and they are embarassed or just cannot afford US medication prices. No I am not a hero, and I get a commission, but I work hard for it (I do not over-SEO, spam, use doorway pages, trick people into buying something). I cannot deny, I can see painkillers, and I can see anti depressants sold online (though I do not target ads specifically for these), and I have mixed feelings about it:
1. some % of these people buy online because it is cheaper for them (good)
2. some % of these are buying these online because they do not get a real prescription (what do you do if you have pains/depression and you are denied prescription - you go online and get it)
2. some % might be abusing these substances -well about that, i do not feel good, and have no control over it, I can say that these people at least do not use heroine or crack, and if they really want to get these, they can get them "offline".
Excuse me, I might have been off-topic a bit, but let me explain: if google (and other engines filter sites pointing to/or online pharmacies, your mailbox will be full of "get it up in 3 minutes" and "get your happy prozac online" junk. But this is only one side effect, the others will be prices sky rocketing, so all those non-abuser-online shoppers will be forced to find these in other engines, like those only PPC (pay-per-click) engines targeted for online shoppers-> eg. google will loose searches, advertisement money and i think reputation, since filtering is censorship, and censorship is not right.
I believe that substances should be controlled, but in a way that is not only a control over protecting whoever else's business, but serving the interest of the masses. Appearently online drugstores are needed, and as such services google should provide search results for them and whatever is associated with them.
Some of you might think that I am just an other lowlife protecting my business, selling drugs online to whoever wants that, and you might be half right. I am doing it because it is extra $$, because I can do it on my own, because I think it is more good than bad. And beleive it or not, I started it because I needed a project to keep me busy and interested at my boring daytime job as a sysadmin. If they will filter our drug searches, I just walk away and work on something, I just beleive that it is not Right.
PS: google only allows FDA approved medication in their adwords system, so they are already under pressure if you ask me. Feel free to mail me if it is not spam:)