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Google Sues Dodgy Advertisers
angry tapir writes "Google is at its wit's end dealing with illegal sellers of prescription drugs that market medicines on its ad network, so it has decided to take some of these allegedly rogue advertisers to court. Rogue prescription drug sellers have increased in number and become more sophisticated in their dealings, and 'a small percentage' of them have been able to dodge Google's efforts to block them from running ads on its network, according to the company."
... please do some editing! There is no need to link to another website when you can go directly to the source!
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Just because you and me, and I suspect most Slashdot readers, don't click on ads doesn't mean nobody does. The simple fact is that millions of people do click on ads and Google make an enormous amount of money from it.
;)
On TV I see adverts for all sorts of thing which are never going to be of any interest to me, my friends, or family, but there are several million other people who will lap it up.
On another note, I'm actually finding some adverts I see on my Android phone to be much more relevant to me due to the location awareness that comes with a mobile device. Yes, I know Google gathers even more data about me when it also knows where I am, etc, but hey, I just saw my local pizza restaurant has 2 for 1 today. Now, that is useful.
I get people coming to the reference desk asking for information about various treatments for ailments. Sometimes actual science-based medicine, sometimes plausible alternative medicine, and sometimes outright quackery, and sometimes all three at once.
I usually turn the monitor around so that they can see what I am doing. (Sometimes I think this may be a mistake, because they don't understand what I am doing.) If I'm doing a series of Google searches, trying to narrow things down to what we're looking for, they'll stop me and point to the ads. Usually (almost invariably) selling some transparently bogus alternative treatment. (Remember, they're coming to me asking me to help them find out what's what, not necessarily looking for someplace to buy their radiation crystal magnets.) They'll say "OH, OH, THAT'S IT!" when they see a keyword or two in the ad that relates to what they're looking for.
There are a LOT of people who receive information completely uncritically. They can't tell an ad trying to sell them something from an informational article. They can't tell the difference between an emotional appeal or an argument based essentially on sympathetic magic from actual science. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO CLICK THOSE ADS. They'll reject things if they've been inoculated against it, but only because they've been told that they should, and had that admonition connected to some deeply held belief. They won't do so because they have legitimately considered whether it could be true or false.
That is why advertisers, particularly on Google with its text ads, have the potential to do a lot of harm.