121–130 of 341 posts
> We’d also been careful to not ever violate Google’s Adwords weapons policy, which prohibits “the promotion of knives, such as butterfly knives, (balisongs) and switchblades.” Sounds like they were promoting knives, and hence violating the policy.
What's really important is this line: "For that reason, we wanted to let you guys, loyal Cutting Edge readers and Knife Depot fans, know that you might not being seeing Knife Depot ads peppered across the Internet. " If you don't get to advertise with Google you basically don't get to advertise on the Internet. That's a powerful monopoly, one they've had for years, and that's the real story here. You have to deal wit…
I'm in favor of banning porn ads (generally), since those tend to be offensive to a lot of people and also are highly correlated with spammy behavior, but I'd be tempted to boycott a vendor who prohibited weapons ads for any reason other than legal compliance. Amazon is pretty reasonable (knives are fine, firearms accessories are fine, but firearms and ammunition are out due to compliance issues). Google has no excus…
> Amazon is pretty reasonable (knives are fine, firearms accessories are fine, but firearms and ammunition are out As a target shooter, I don't find this any more reasonable than a gay person might find "personal ads are fine, but not gay personal ads". All too often our definition of "reasonable" is "gores HIS ox but not mine".
You cannot wield the kind of economic power Google does and not be evil, at least for the working definition many people have of "evil". We've put a huge hunk of our intellectual and economic capital under the control of a marketing company. I really, really like Google, but I don't see this situation as being stable over a period of decades. Maybe 5-10 more years or so, but not a lot longer. These kinds of decisions…
It didn't mean anything. You said it yourself: Google is a marketing company. And that slogan served exactly that purpose.
We have a name for it in politics. We call it "rhetoric."
Don't get me wrong, I hate the idea of government telling anyone what they can and cannot do. Massive monopolies is one place where I can see a need for some kind of legal intervention. The reason obviously being that a large monopoly has no competing entity to force it to modify its behavior.
While it is true that Google tries to "clean-up" their search I think this is almost an arrogant stance. How can a few hundred people be in charge of deciding what you and I should and should not see? Methinks we should be given control. If I don't like weapons of any kind I ought to be able to go to my control panel and exclude them from my results. It should be my choice, not theirs.
That said, these "assisted opening" blades are an obvious example of exploiting a loophole in the laws. For all intents and purposes they are switch blades. The end result is exactly the same: Open a knife very quickly.
Then there's the whole argument about how much sense it makes to granularly ban stuff like this. I have no clue as to how much crime out there can be attributed directly to switch blades. Probably not much at all. Although I do remember that knives are on par with certain types of guns in terms of murders per year.
Circling back, the "Google Syndrome" is one that is constantly growing in threat level. I've said this many time. I like their services, but this business of killing your account auto-magically with no real business process in place to deal with the problems is just total bullshit. At one point it has to stop. I have no clue what's going to make that happen, but it sure seems to be leaving a path of destruction behind it.
The best thing we can do is stop using every new Google service they throw at us. I know, it's hard to let go of the free drugs, but look at what you are promoting and decide if this is what you want in the future five times over.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure if you're just trolling, but I'll bite. The government has regulations in place on dangerous weapons, which you are ostensibly free, through the democratic process, to change if they are not to your liking. Google has decided that legal/illegal is not a sufficient criteria, and made up their own rules about how you can use their service, but then only applied those rules to smaller clients. That is the evil…
I agree that it would be better if Google applied the same rules to other vendors selling similar knives. They are entirely free to decide how you can use their service, there's nothing evil about that. Edit: To clarify, I've used knives professionally (diving instructor) and recreationally (kite surfer), but I fail to see the non-weapon use for a knife that is small (and therefore concealable) and also opens quickly…
I am an Eagle scout. Being able to quickly pull a knife out and open it one handed, due to it being assisted opening and small enough to clip into my pocket, has been beneficial more time than I can count.
I have had a knife in my pocket nearly every day since high school. I have used it thousands of times in that time period. I never once used it as a weapon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure if you're just trolling, but I'll bite. The government has regulations in place on dangerous weapons, which you are ostensibly free, through the democratic process, to change if they are not to your liking. Google has decided that legal/illegal is not a sufficient criteria, and made up their own rules about how you can use their service, but then only applied those rules to smaller clients. That is the evil…
I agree that it would be better if Google applied the same rules to other vendors selling similar knives. They are entirely free to decide how you can use their service, there's nothing evil about that. Edit: To clarify, I've used knives professionally (diving instructor) and recreationally (kite surfer), but I fail to see the non-weapon use for a knife that is small (and therefore concealable) and also opens quickly…
That can be handy when trying to rescue someone, or so my volunteer firefighter friends tell me. Claiming that such a feature has no legitimate purpose is like claiming that a crowbar has no legitimate purpose.
"I fail to see the non-weapon use for a knife that is small (and therefore concealable) and also opens quickly"
Small knives are easy to carry around, that should be obvious. As for opening quickly, that is just a convenience -- why should convenience be frowned upon? Would you be less concerned if these were fixed blade knives?
Sure, knives and crowbars are weapons when you apply them to human beings. People have been murdered with screwdrivers (is a small screwdriver a bad thing?). On the other hand, the NATO e-tool, designed for use by soldiers at war, is often used for gardening because it is convenient -- it can be used as an ax, it can be used as a shovel, it folds up for easy storage, etc.
Whenever I ban a user from one of my sites for an infraction, he invariably points to several other infracting users and says "well why do they get to post porn (or ads for weapons or whatever) and I don't?" The reason is because I didn't catch the other users. Or their infraction isn't as bad. While I feel bad for the knife company, I also know dealing with user-generated content (like these ads) is hard.
If there was some small company that got away with it, you might be right. But the issue here isn't Walmart's actions going unnoticed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They're trying not to burn bridges, which is good business. I think that's the parent's point: that you cannot afford to burn bridges with Google, even when they are wrong. Speaks to their power. > Google asked them to stop advertising for one category of products. I read it as Google asking them to stop advertising through Adwords as long as their site carried the products in question, even if the ads weren't for…
I'm not the OP, but I do work for Knife Depot. Google did not ask us to stop advertising for one category of product. They asked us to remove those products from our site, and if we didn't, we could not advertise for ANYTHING via AdWords, including kitchen knives, cutting boards, pocket knives, etc.
If this is true, it's completely crazy. How does Google think they can tell people what products to sell on their own shops??
Then I would completely agree with what the OP did, of course. In fact, there really was no other way.
Being an AdWords veteran (having managed campaigns for several clients) all I could do was nod my head grumble under my breath about how this is "business as usual" for Google. One of my clients who was selling in the health market had this and other seemingly "unfair" treatments happen again and again over the years. All the while Google was taking money from Canadian "pharmacies" and allowing big brand competitors…
That's good advice. It is also a sad indicator of bad things are.