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Chinese Ad Resellers On Anti-Google Hunger Strike
itwbennett writes "About 200 employees from 7 Chinese ad reselling companies are protesting outside Google's offices in Shanghai in response to Google terminating their contracts, said Fan Meiyong, a representative for the group. 40 of those have gone on a hunger strike that will last until the group's grievances are resolved, Fan added. The ad resellers have said they have held talks with Google about the matter but they still don't know why the contracts were terminated. The group has even written an open letter to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, asking them for their intervention."
The "search engine optimization" community is waking up to the fact that Google "reselling" is over. The October 27th merger of "Google Places" into Google web search wasn't about "places". It was about "businesses". Google is pulling third-party revenue in-house. Google is squeezing out "made for AdWords" sites, "directories", and other intermediaries that are just forwarding clicks. Search for "London hotels" or "DVD player", and notice how far down you have to go to see an organic search result. If you want to advertise a product that's found by search, you now talk to Google directly.
This will put a big dent in the "search engine optimization" industry. We'll see many junk sites going under, too.
Bing, having copied Google in this within days, is doing roughly the same thing.
The guys in China are getting hit by this, but they're just collateral damage of a major policy change.
In china you can hire professional mourners for funerals, so I wonder if you can hire professional hunger strikers.
Sure you can, but try to avoid the ones with the "Will Hunger Strike For Food" signs...
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