I predict Google will come around and open up your adwords account again. Don't give up on it if, of course, you want their traffic. Were you running product listing ads (PLAs) as well?
Not a single person from Google will ever read the e-mails from your Adwords account unless you bring in thousands of dollars of revenue for them every day.
Usually when a post about Google shows up on the HN front page, someone from Google shows up in the comments and takes some common-sense action. They are probably figuring out how to handle it now.
> 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 may think there is unreasonableness here, but is that unreasonableness Amazon's? For Amazon to enter online sales of weapons, they have to address a mess of state and local compliance issues which are not their core competency. No matter what your opinion is on firearms and ammunition, Amazon's reticence as a business to get involved with that seems very reasonable to me.
Not really -- Amazon would just have to have a policy along the lines of, "We only sell guns via gun stores in your local area," and their legal team would only have to ensure compliance with regulations in 50 states (and whatever other countries they do business in). The last rifle I purchased was from a friend in New York, and he mailed the rifle and the case to a local gun store, which is basically what the law requires. Amazon could do the same in the USA if they were willing to enter that market or were willing to allow third parties to use Amazon for such transactions; I suspect that their corporate image is a bigger issue than the law.
http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/176077?hl=en Company tried to sell a product that Google prohibits. Where is the story here? Trying to say "well they do it too!" is not and is never a valid complaint, just as it wasn't in primary school -- their day will come. Further the desperate reaching to make Google evil is a stretch given that doing this can only possibly lose them money (favoring the "big guys"…
I don't understand where you're coming from. How is it not a valid complaint to point out that Google is restricting one company but not the big advertisers? How do you know their day will come? How can you say favoring the big guys isn't rational for a bid-based service when the big guys are most likely to be the biggest bidders?
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…
The only way to stop a bad guy clicking through an assisted-opening knife ad on the internet is with a good guy clicking through an assisted-opening knife ad on the internet. You have crossed the National Assisted-Opening Knife Ad Association for the last time Google! We have representatives!!
That's bullsh*t, knives kill just as guns do. In the UK we have many more knife related crime than we do gun related crime. That said, the issue here is not how lethal one is over the other, but Google playing judge,jury and executioner for something they should have no right to jurisdict over.
The UK has knife crime but not knife murder , despite what the fearmongering press would have you believe. The UK murder rate is a quarter that of the US, and is in line with similar countries.
The UK also has 1/5 the US' population - what does all this mean?
Oh, the irony of publicizing the same knives via YouTube, the Google property that censors boobies but allows you to promote machine guns to a global audience...
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…
> They're unhappy with its actions, perhaps even livid, but it's always a tone of "Golly! This is really unfortunate and I'm sure nobody at Google really meant to do this, but...." They're trying not to burn bridges, which is good business. But it's true Google has a monopoly on online ads, which should not be allowed to continue unchallenged. Don't like Dell? Buy Lenovo. Don't like AdWords? Die. On the other hand, t…
If I understand correctly, Google asked them to REMOVE the knife's from sale on their site - not just from any ads running on adwords.
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…
It's also interesting that there is no effective difference between a switchblade and these "spring assisted" knives. Yes, the mechanism is different. But in both cases, you push a button, and the blade pops out rapidly.
The very existence of these knives is clearly to circumvent existing laws regarding switchblades.
This is entirely separate from the big-guys vs little-guys argument being made against Google.
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…
> They're unhappy with its actions, perhaps even livid, but it's always a tone of "Golly! This is really unfortunate and I'm sure nobody at Google really meant to do this, but...." They're trying not to burn bridges, which is good business. But it's true Google has a monopoly on online ads, which should not be allowed to continue unchallenged. Don't like Dell? Buy Lenovo. Don't like AdWords? Die. On the other hand, t…
Are you sure about that? I have the impression Google wanted them to remove assisted opening knives from their site. The Amazon ad they used as an example was not for assisted opening knives, but the Amazon page they showed was.