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How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

knife-depot.com

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Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#271

Post by OGinparadise »

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.

You missed his point: you praise the King and leader by saying that certain underlings that do the bad acts are giving the wonderful King /Stalin a bad name. You might have missed the show trials where someone was always being blamed for x and y. People have complaints about life, someone has to be responsible. At Google someone is doing bad things but it can't be the wonderful and "open and free" loving founders, just some bad apples. They money is going to Google's bank, of course.

-- They're a publicly traded company. They have an obligation to the shareholders. Turning down paying customers because of some moral objection to pointy objects is a little bit crazy.

The obligation is not like you seem to put it. They have an obligation to make money over the course of years, not this quarter. If I wanted to spend $1 mil on "Abort your baby just for the hell of it" Google, even if 'it' agreed with the message might see this as alienating their other customers and decline. Likewise, using search to drum up Adwords business, in addition to being possibly illegal (not disclosed to users) can make Google lose credibility and that's all they have /had.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#272

Post by archon »

jlgreco wrote: post #256
archon wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the sole reason I would never ever consider living in the USA Just to provide a counter-anecdote, the fact that I couldn't legally own weapons capable of leveling the playing field between me and an armed criminal makes me disinclined to ever consider living in the UK. The best I can do for protection is a baseball bat? Terrifying.

To be honest, as an American, either position strikes me as irrational. The chances of being the victim of random violent in either country is not worth worrying about. My habit of jaywalking probably puts me in far more danger than either not having a weapon in the UK or simply living in the US where others do, but I rarely give jaywalking a second thought.

> either position strikes me as irrational.

Right. Because they are both irrational. Fear isn't a rational thing. I think both tehwalrus's comment and mine are two very different responses to the same fear.

tehwalrus fears being surrounded by people who are "armed to the teeth, legally." I fear being surrounded by people who are armed to the teeth, illegally. tehwalrus would rather those people not be armed at all. I would rather have the ability to at least attempt to defend myself with comparable force.

Where we differ is in our assumptions. I assume that no law will ever make firearms magically inaccessible to criminals.

> The chances of being the victim of random violent in either country is not worth worrying about.

Yep. I realize, in the rational parts of my mind, that if I sold my guns tomorrow and never touched one again, I have a pretty high probability of living to a ripe old age without ever being a victim of violence. I don't want to put words in tehwalrus' mouth, but I think he probably realizes too that if he were to live in the States, the chance of one of those gun-carriers around him on a day to day basis going on a shooting spree is quite small.

But my point is that fear is immune to statistics. In my mind, owning guns for self-defense (and, on a side note, knowing when and how to use them legally) is the exact same thing as buying life insurance. Statistically, will I ever need life insurance? No. Otherwise insurance companies wouldn't make a profit. But there's always the chance. So in the same way that I want my family to be provided for in the event that I die unexpectedly, I want the ability to attempt to defend myself and the people I care about.

Would I prefer to live in a perfect world where nobody's afraid of violence? Absolutely. But unfortunately we don't live in such a place.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#273

Post by archon »

oscardelben wrote: post #264
jlgreco wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, as an American, either position strikes me as irrational. The chances of being the victim of random violent in either country is not worth worrying about. My habit of jaywalking probably puts me in far more danger than either not having a weapon in the UK or simply living in the US where others do, but I rarely give jaywalking a second thought.

It's not like a criminal is going to give you a call letting you know that they're getting in so you get prepared. Fun exercise: did guns save more lives or took more away? EDIT: this is for gp.

> It's not like a criminal is going to give you a call letting you know that they're getting in so you get prepared.

It's late and I'm tired, so I must be missing the point you're making here. How does knowing whether a criminal is coming affect the argument for or against firearms for defense? It takes me about 2 seconds to ready a firearm, and I have this excellent living burglar alarm called a "black labrador retriever" who will give me at least that much warning. :)

> Fun exercise: did guns save more lives or took more away?

Took more away, definitely. What's your point? We can't magically un-invent firearms, unfortunately.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#274

Post by Spooky23 »

Roedou wrote: post #99
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…

As is often the case, Google has to find a line that allows legitimate brands to do their thing, but also make sure that smaller/less legitimate sites not exploit their systems. Google won't tell Amazon/Target/Walmart, to stop selling a product or get banned from AdWords. But a small retailer who wants to circumvent the rules could capture PPC traffic for a similar (but legitimate) product, and then funnel people to…

They don't hold Amazon/Target/Walmart sacred. They probably have contracts where these vendors get commitments from google that they will not be treated this way.

Pissing off some little knife company means exactly nothing to google.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#275

Post by NoPiece »

anigbrowl wrote: post #194
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).

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.

Folding knives aren't new, and aren't primarily intended as an alternative to switchblades. Folding the blade into the handle just makes an easy to carry package, with your are a contractor, or a sportsman. Knife regulation is mostly around the length, not whether it folds or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Knives

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#276

Post by oscardelben »

archon wrote: post #273
oscardelben wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like a criminal is going to give you a call letting you know that they're getting in so you get prepared. Fun exercise: did guns save more lives or took more away? EDIT: this is for gp.

> It's not like a criminal is going to give you a call letting you know that they're getting in so you get prepared. It's late and I'm tired, so I must be missing the point you're making here. How does knowing whether a criminal is coming affect the argument for or against firearms for defense? It takes me about 2 seconds to ready a firearm, and I have this excellent living burglar alarm called a "black labrador retr…

I don't want to argue freedom of owning a gun, and you may very wel be trained to deal in such situations, but a gun most likely wont help you if you get in trouble. You can take away guns, but it would take many years, perhaps decades. Lots of other countries have done it.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#277

Post by jccalhoun »

"After some deep thinking, we decided that serving our customer base, who legally buy large amounts of assisted-opening knives, was more important than continuing to advertise with Google. For this reason, we decided to not remove the knives and forgo our Google Adwords account"

I'm not clear. Did Knife Depot remove their ads or did Google?

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#278

Post by aspensmonster »

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…

The distinction is not whether or not pressure is applied, as the video seems to state. Pressure is obviously applied to the mechanism in either case. Each mechanism also uses springs to propel the blade outwards. The distinction is between whether you are operating a lever or (what amounts to) a wedge.

In the switchblade, the button is releasing a wedge of some sort that is preventing the blade from then swinging out entirely due to the force of the spring. In the spring-assisted model, a spring is also present to propel the blade, but there is not enough tension for the blade to release on its own. Instead, the user must torque a lever a certain radial distance before the spring's force is sufficient to finish propelling the blade, hence the term "assisted."

In terms of time-to-readiness, this might not be a big difference. But I was always under the impression that switchblades was supposed to refer to spring-operated "plunging" type knives, where the blade is concealed in a chamber before being propelled outward by the spring, requiring only a click of a button rather than a slashing movement on the part of the operator to cause harm.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#280

Post by TomGullen »

Here's one possible explanation. Amazon is a high value customer so Google carefully reviewed their t&c to ensure their selling policies are in line with googles own policies. They confidently know that amazon won't sell anything illegal, and that amazon have measures in place to deal with rogue sellers on their service. They know amazon has been around for a long time and are trusted by google and the general public. They know that if amazon screws up, amazon would probably take most of the heat. With this information google considers amazon to be a low risk user of their services.

Knife depot is a small customer, and google cant justify the time to review your policies and risk that accepting you as a customer entails. If you screw up, google would probably take a large part of the blame.

The popular alternative hypothesis seem to be that google is pure evil.

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