Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

knife-depot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 341 posts

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#201

Post by jordoh »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #181
jordoh wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have evidence to support the assertion that it isn't purely percentage based? Perhaps there is some account out there that has the same ratio of prohibited items as knife-depot, but has not been banned? Whether AdWords should allow "assisted open knife" ads is beside the point. Correct or not, AdWords is counting those as prohibited, the allegation of the OP is that AdWords banning criteria are applied differe…

"Do you have evidence to support the assertion that it isn't purely percentage based?" No. I reasoned to it by flipping it over. If the banning is purely percentage based then a viable business would be to create an entity that laundered AdWords spend. This is how it would work. Let's call our company "Ads-r-us" and it contracts with Knife Depot and 1-800 Flowers. It charges Knife Depot a 'premium' to get its 'ban-in…

There could be such a service flying under the radar, but third-party AdWords resellers are required by the TOS to only use one account per client.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#202

Post by aymeric »

I got into the same situation with my outsourcing company http://taskarmy.com

They suspended our account although we made the changes necessary to comply with their terms of service (you can't guarantee 1st page in SEO services).

In the meantime, some of our competitors can still advertise their services.

Since my account has been suspended, it massively slowed down the growth and I couldn't a better replacement.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#203

Post by walshemj »

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…

yep years ago on Matt Cutts blog I said at some stage googles going to get regulated.

Googles no1 priority should be managing the process to delay and mitigate regulation and not keep drinking in the last chance saloon going "hey fuck you" repeatedly which is only going to make it worse when the evil day comes.

I know I shared a office with guys in BT who spent years working on a project (ISDN D Channel) and they where not even sure if we could ever launch the product as Ofcom had the final say.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#204

Post by Karunamon »

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.

Or because you really like the company. I think you've misinterpreted the thoughts involved here..

Google is one I have pretty positive feelings about, not just because their applications are usually the best as far as web-based SaaS offerings go, they're free, usually painless (for most people), but also because they just plain make cool stuff. (Glass? Driverless cars?)

I'd count their presence and activities, even with the warts, as a huge net benefit for technology and even humanity as a whole.

Possibly irrational fanboying aside, the electric or phone company or cable company the other hand are things that people love to hate. Off the top of my head..

* Arbitrary and large rate hikes or base prices * Take it or leave it attitude * Customer-hostile

It makes a consumer feel somewhat hunted, as in they tolerate the existence of and do business with these companies because they have no other choice.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#205

Post by tehwalrus »

(from UK, and happy to accept your downvotes):

I'm shocked that people litteraly sell knives designed to hurt people on the internet, and that people on HN come to the defence of these arms dealers. I assumed this was about kitchen knives when I clicked on the link.

The US constitution was written with a right to bear arms so people could overthrow the government, not protect themselves from criminals. Since then, that government has entrenched power to the point where it would be nearly impossible for even another state to take it down, let alone a group of armed civilians - thus rendering the constitutional clauses irrelevant to their original purpose. (note to secret services: no, I don't want to overthrow governments or start wars, I'm talking hypothetically.)

In the rest of the developed world where weapons are generally banned, as they are in the UK, criminals simply don't use weapons on civilians (apart from high value targets, perhaps) because the penalties for doing so are so harsh. Criminals literally throw their guns away in a chase, rather than use them on the police/get caught with them. Police are generally unarmed, apart from specially trained units (dawn raids, at airports, etc).

This is the sole reason I would never ever consider living in the USA - the risk from a) criminals, b) civilian "heros" and c) the police themselves, all of whom are armed to the teeth, legally. Terrifying.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#206

Post by arethuza »

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.

And if we had a more sensible culture around alcohol use in the UK, particularly in my native Scotland, I'm sure we'd have a much lower level of all violence.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#207

Post by saraid216 »

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 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.

Uh, yes they did. Kingdoms of the beforetime were not all Stalinist Russias. Kings had to gather and maintain support; some of them did this through shutting down dissenters hard, but many of them never did, or did so with the full support of "the people".

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#208

Post by score »

tehwalrus wrote: post #205

(from UK, and happy to accept your downvotes): I'm shocked that people litteraly sell knives designed to hurt people on the internet, and that people on HN come to the defence of these arms dealers . I assumed this was about kitchen knives when I clicked on the link. The US constitution was written with a right to bear arms so people could overthrow the government , not protect themselves from criminals. Since then,…

Welcome to the US, where the rights of the individual override the rights and safety of the whole.

Here in the US, tolerance to do and say "whatever the hell I want" is demanded but rarely returned.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#209

Post by logn »

dasil003 wrote: post #197
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Algorithmic? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/27/google_raters_manual... ("Revealed: Google's manual for its unseen humans who rate the web")

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#210

Post by corresation »

jlgreco wrote: post #198
corresation wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is absolutely no accidental opening of the knife

Knife has an edge actuator that, when pushed (by your thumb, the table you're leaning against...you know, anything that pushes on it), causes it to kinetically open. I think most of the people around here are fairly intelligent and can see countless accidental deployments scenarios, notwithstanding your endless cries of "bullshit!".

notice the "tools and home improvement" section...

Knife is by Smith & Wesson and is called a SWAT knife. Totally a "tool and home improvement" section. At this point I think you must be just having a laugh.

Post reply on HN