41–50 of 341 posts
Sounds like they were promoting knives, and hence violating the policy.
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.
very slowly, but very, very surly, google is doing a complete 180 on "don't be evil". I think the slow pressure of being a public company is really going to strangle out much of the "good side" of Google. Everything they've done in the past 1.5yrs has been terrible for their users.
Hang on, what? Refusing to advertise knives which are clearly intended to be used as weapons is 'evil' now is it?
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 part.
This wouldn't feel so uncomfortable if google wasn't such a big player in the online advertising world.
very slowly, but very, very surly, google is doing a complete 180 on "don't be evil". I think the slow pressure of being a public company is really going to strangle out much of the "good side" of Google. Everything they've done in the past 1.5yrs has been terrible for their users.
Hang on, what? Refusing to advertise knives which are clearly intended to be used as weapons is 'evil' now is it?
That seems a bit melodramatic. I have one that I keep around for general use around the home. Good for opening boxes, cutting twine/zipties, etc. It's very nice since I can put it in my pocket (unlike a paring knife) and can open it with one hand (unlike a pocket knife). It is a just plain practical design.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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".
I think the difference is that firearms are heavily regulated by localities in different ways. For example, transport over state lines may require coordination with the shipper. For Amazon, having attorneys stay up to date on the law in multiple jurisdictions doesn't fit with their operating model. Knives are less difficult regulatory-wise, and where there are local legal issues, they usually aren't serious felonies.
They already calculate local taxes (city and county taxes too!) for the states in which they choose to tax.
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…
If a big institution screws you over but has found a clever way of perpetually evading or delegating away vocal blame for that... they're still responsible, unless they're fixing the system in the very-near term. If the resources aren't there to fix the system, that's because they've consciously chosen not to allocate those resources.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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".
Knives are a lot less lethal than guns.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Knives, nunchucks, brass knuckles, etc. are usually covered by state level laws, from what I've seen, and the legality varies widely. Firearms are a slightly different story, since the 2nd Amendment very specifically protects firearms ownership. So yes, it is possible that somewhere or other, a switch blade knife is illegal while an "assault rifle" is legal. I saw "assault rifle" in quotes, because most people talkin…
There's nothing specific about firearms in the 2nd is there? Just "the right to keep and bear arms", which describes blades as much as it does guns.
However, I am not an expert on your curious rules regarding the interpretation of laws, so I might very well be wrong.
very slowly, but very, very surly, google is doing a complete 180 on "don't be evil". I think the slow pressure of being a public company is really going to strangle out much of the "good side" of Google. Everything they've done in the past 1.5yrs has been terrible for their users.
Hang on, what? Refusing to advertise knives which are clearly intended to be used as weapons is 'evil' now is it?
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.