back to article Google banned 30,000 advertisers post Economic Resurrection

In the fall of 2008, when the worldwide economy began to melt, Google responded by shamelessly expanding ad coverage on its web-dominating search engine, letting more ads onto more pages. But now that the economy has recovered, the web giant has suddenly become more much vigilant in its efforts to weed out what it considers low- …

COMMENTS

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  1. Michael Kean

    Now if they could only...

    ... get rid of stupid search results that have no bearing on what I actually want - such as those sites that then go do another 'search' based on what I searched for but then only pick some of the keywords selectively, giving useless results.

    Web Of Trust (Firefox addin) for the win in this case :)

  2. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    the article is bo$$ocks

    Google is a company who are free to add or remove advertisers as they feel fit subject to the terms and conditions they display when you sign up. The article assumes that you have a right to advertise with Google, you don't. So Google cut advertisers and revenues go up... hmmm ...seems like good business sense to me.

    So basically the article criticises Google for good business sense by getting rid of advertisers who aren't creating/having no impact on revenue ...

    In other news, the sun came up again this morning and the snow melted ....

    ... crap journalism ... just out to bash Google ...

    1. Cameron Colley

      You're missing hte point.

      Either:

      a) Google was deliberately allowing dodgy companies to advertise -- potentially exposing us all to scams and malware.

      Or:

      b) Google banned some legitimate companies from advertising with it because it felt like it.

      Now, if point 'b' above is correct then, as you quite rightly point out, "it's just business" -- though for a company which says "don't do evil" it seems a little odd, I also wonder at a company whose T's and C's include "we can drop you any time for no reason, ner ner" when they're all for neutrality and all that.

      If point 'a' is correct, then Google have deliberately exposed a large number of web users to problems for their own financial gain -- which seems a little "evil" to me.

      Google are generally "bashed" for being hypocritical rather than for being a business -- and a lot of their practices make Microsoft and Apple look downright "caring".

  3. Mike Flugennock

    Economy "recovered"? When?

    Jeez, Metz; are you sure you're not the guy who sneaked the baggie of cocaine into the Space Shuttle assembly hangar at KSC?

  4. JaitcH
    Unhappy

    We stopped using Adwords

    as Google never paid us.

  5. Stef 2

    It is called

    business.

  6. Doug Glass
    Go

    Just a Business Decision ...

    ... designed to increase revenues. Nothing personal you see, just business as usual.

  7. heyrick Silver badge

    AdBlock Plus...

    ....so it doesn't really matter how good or bad the ads are.

    I agree with Michael - the search results that are themselves searches is what blighted AltaVista and Lycos a decade ago and why I dumped both for Google. Google ought to rethink what it searches. And can we please have an option to not show "relevant" stuff from Twitter? I don't give a toss what people tweet, it is not relevant at all.

  8. NZAmoeba
    FAIL

    Ironically

    This article had a google ad beside it for make-a-ton-of-money.com, telling me I can make $77million in 2 years.

    Quality indeed.

  9. Rolf Howarth
    Unhappy

    Re:If only

    You're absolutely right. Google used to provide far and away the best quality of search results but now they just return spam, page after page of price comparison sites or auto-generated "blogs" that are just a vehicle for placing more ads. The ads on those sham web sites are invariably placed with Google, so no surprise Google doesn't object to them coming top of the search results.

  10. Estariel

    Yes, but...

    Guys.

    The purpose of the article isn't to criticise the fact that google is a clever way to make money.

    The point is to share with the rest of us, just how it is done.

  11. TeeCee Gold badge
    FAIL

    Say it ain't so!

    So when business is bad, Google turn a blind eye to the malware pushers, pyramid scam merchants et. al. in order to keep turning a profit?

    Some might consider that, er, evil.

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