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How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

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Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#191

Post by [deleted] »

rdl wrote: post #177
arethuza wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Murder rates are often given per 100,000 inhabitants - so size of country isn't really a factor: United States: 4.8 United Kingdom: 1.2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona... vacri's statement seems completely accurate.

While I agree the US is far more violent than the UK, most of the US's incremental violence is explained by the drug war. Even if we had zero guns and the UK had US-style gun possession and laws, I suspect US drug laws (and other forms of extreme economic/political/legal inequality) would give us a higher murder rate.

[deleted]

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#192

Post by badgar »

mtraven wrote: post #168
anigbrowl wrote: post #156

I watched his video that purported to explain the difference between a switchblade and a spring assisted knife. As far as I can tell the only difference is that the location of the switch has changed. This is a distinction without a substantive difference. So yo would need a slightly different hand movement to trigger this alternative spring-assisted knife. Big deal; as someone who used to like knives enough to have…

According to their site the assisted-opening knives are legal in all states, whereas switchblades aren't, so there must be some meaningful distinction (unless the law just hasn't caught up yet).

The "meaningful distinction" is that "assisted-opening" knives require a non-zero amount of force in the direction that the knife actually opens. Switchblades can just have a button.

The former takes a few minutes of practice to open smoothly, the latter doesn't.

There's no reason to buy an assisted-opening knife if switchblades are also available. So yes, they absolutely exist to exploit a loophole. Loopholes in laws do tend to create (often short-lived) markets.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#193

Post by JumpCrisscross »

There may be merit in splitting Google's Search and Advertising businesses. Advertising would pay Search (or Bing or Duck Duck Go) to place ads in its results via an API. Search would indiscriminately host ads posted to it by ad brokers, of which Advertising would be one. Search would be freed from having to police advertisements. Advertising's policing would be checked by competitive pressure.

In a stylised securities transaction we have customers, brokers, and an exchange. Customers have choices between brokers. Brokers, of which there are many, exercise discretion in how much capability they give which customers. The exchange, of which there is one, exercises discretion in which brokers it transacts with, but not which customers get to transact on it. This is important since the exchange has something approaching monopoly power. It also means the exchanges aren't liable for non-compliant customers - the brokers are.

Skip back to Google. Search is the exchange and Advertising is the broker. The exchange only permits one broker. Naturally, the broker-exchange is liable for policing non-compliant and stupid customers (barring a very large expansion in government which would permit it to monitor all transactions going through Google). It has also extended its exchange monopoly power to its broker.

We love disintermediation. But intermediaries facilitate checks on concentration in a competitive system.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#194

Post by anigbrowl »

mtraven wrote: post #168
anigbrowl wrote: post #156

I watched his video that purported to explain the difference between a switchblade and a spring assisted knife. As far as I can tell the only difference is that the location of the switch has changed. This is a distinction without a substantive difference. So yo would need a slightly different hand movement to trigger this alternative spring-assisted knife. Big deal; as someone who used to like knives enough to have…

According to their site the assisted-opening knives are legal in all states, whereas switchblades aren't, so there must be some meaningful distinction (unless the law just hasn't caught up yet).

I'm pretty sure it's the latter. I strongly suspect 'legal in all states' means that it just hasn't come to court yet. It's possible that the legal definition of a switchblade is so specific (eg about the button being on the handle of the knife and a safety switch being present) that this new design doesn't qualify, in which case this new design would be legal unless or until states see fit to prevent its sale.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#195

Post by cromwellian »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #167
cromwellian wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google got sued over online drug ads before and had to pay $500 million in fines. The US Government was even running a criminal probe against Google that could have put executives in jail for these kinds of ads. So you can only imagine they are a lot more careful now given that experience. Alcohol, Weapons, and Drugs are areas regulated by various governments around the world and carry civil and criminal policies for…

What credentials does Google have to decide what is bogus versus what is not? Why should they get to decide what ads (for legal products) have a chance of being shown to me? Perhaps more importantly, especially for entrepreneurs, why should the effective "gateway to the Internet" be allowed to capriciously choose to favor established brands over small companies?

Well, for one, the threat of the FCC, FTC, or FDA fining them enormous sums of money. Google is damned if they do, and damned if they don't. If they allow any and all ads, even from those who are outright running congames and ripping people off, they will be accused of profiting off of immoral activity (as they were with the drugs-over-the-internet case.) However, if they then turn around and refuse to run such ads, they are accused of censorship, and once again, being evil.

They have to walk a tight rope, doing enough curation to avoid government and public outcry, and at the same time, not doing too much. The world isn't black and white, it's always gray, and deciding where to draw the line is not something which is objective.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#196

Post by readme »

curiousfiddler wrote: post #88
readme wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evil is a totally relative term. Google probably thinks they are being benevolent by taking an anti-weapons stance. I'd be inclined to disagree...

Can you name a few other companies which operate at Google's scale and are less evil? I feel Google has had a big contribution in how open internet as a medium is. I'd like to believe that the people at Google's helm are generally nicer, and can be trusted with this massive responsibility (more than a lot of other people and other companies). I also believe and hope, that they are picking signals from these conversat…

I never said Google was evil, so I don't feel obligated to answer.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#197

Post by dasil003 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #178
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #16

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…

>This is the same way you'd criticize a king, somebody you are beholden to. "Golly! I know you, the king, are not at fault, but some of these advisers of yours must have accidentally goofed up somewhere..." I don't buy it. People don't criticize a king at all . You don't criticize the communist party in Stalinist Russia, tactfully or otherwise. Doing that gets you sent to the gulag. The reason people say that it was…

I agree. I have no fear of criticizing Google because they are algorithmic. I don't think they're going to dig through my history and find my AdWords account and stick it to me just because I wrote a nasty diatribe about their bullshit. My fear with Google will be that I do the wrong thing accidentally that gets me flagged and there will be no way to rectify it because there is no human behind the controls and I have no back-channel or following to get Matt Cutts to pay attention to me.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#198

Post by jlgreco »

corresation wrote: post #190
jlgreco wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one using a knife as a tool is going to buy an assisted opening knife. Bullshit. I did. > having it trigger unintentionally There is no way in hell. Do you even know what assisted opening knifes are? They are not switchblades. > This is product sold only to teenage boys desperately seeking that high of invincibility. They are sold to anybody that wants to have a knife that is safe but can be opened with one hand…

Bullshit. I did. I see in your other post you claimed that, then listing exactly the use that people resort to a box cutter for (cutting twine, opening boxes, etc, safely opened and closed with one hand, etc). Do you even know what assisted opening knifes are? They are not switchblades. Instead of having a button on the side of the knife that causes it to trigger open via spring actuation, it has a trigger lever on t…

> then listing exactly the use that people resort to a box cutter for

I also have a box-cutter (which by the way, thanks to its lower mass and design, can be opened just as quickly with one hand, despite lacking a spring assist...) Sometimes I use one, other times I use the other. Do you have a problem with that?

> Instead of having a button on the side of the knife that causes it to trigger open via spring actuation, it has a trigger lever on the blade back that causes it to trigger open via spring actuation

So I take it you have never actually used one...

Regardless, they come in many forms. Mine has a thumb-bar on the blade. There is absolutely no accidental opening of the knife, it requires a non-trivial amount of pressure to push past the point where the spring takes over and until that point, the spring works against you. It is as safe as any knife can be and is, quite clearly, a knife designed to be more convenient than regular pocket knives.

Besides your made up bullshit about them being unsafe, why would anyone in the market for a cheap folding knife not buy one that had a spring assist? It is 100% a matter of practicality.

This is not my knife, though mine is of the same form: http://www.amazon.com/Smith-Wesson-SWATMB-Assisted-Opening/d... (notice the "tools and home improvement" section...) Not a high quality knife by any means, but it is incredibly practical and useful.

Believe it or not, not all knife owners are members of the Sharks or the Jets...

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#199

Post by anigbrowl »

badgar wrote: post #192
mtraven wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to their site the assisted-opening knives are legal in all states, whereas switchblades aren't, so there must be some meaningful distinction (unless the law just hasn't caught up yet).

The "meaningful distinction" is that "assisted-opening" knives require a non-zero amount of force in the direction that the knife actually opens. Switchblades can just have a button. The former takes a few minutes of practice to open smoothly, the latter doesn't. There's no reason to buy an assisted-opening knife if switchblades are also available. So yes, they absolutely exist to exploit a loophole. Loopholes in law…

The former takes a few minutes of practice to open smoothly, the latter doesn't.

Having once owned a switchblade, it takes a bit of practice to hold it such a way that you can operate it but not block the path of the outswinging blade with your fingers. Watching the demonstration in this video, there doesn't seem to be any more force employed in operating the switch that there was in pressing the button. I agree that this is probably a short-lived thing that will fade away following a minor regulatory clarification.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#200

Post by mgkimsal »

I can imagine one of the justifications for letting walmart and others get away with it is because they're big, but more specifically, their ad budgets are big. But... so what? Where else are they going to go? Bing? Mapquest?

Perhaps if every major large retailer in the US shaved off a few percent of their ad budget away from Google and gave it to one competitor, there'd be a slim fighting chance of actually upsetting Google's dominance, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case.

Relatedly(?), MS has avoided hardware for a long time... ostensibly under the guise of "not upsetting their partners". But... what would the partners do? Bundle Linux? In mobile, they're sort of doing this, but hardware partners left MS not because MS was competing in the hardware business against them - they left because the option (android) was better.

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