Here in the Netherlands, actually, all over the world, Deepthought couldn't have predicted the number of juridical procedures Google has been facing for their position on the internet.
A salesman of 'e-cigarettes', so called electronic cigarettes that emit less or no nicotine, and no tobacco or health-damaging smoke, has sued Google when they refused to show his AdWords, resulting in a 80% loss of profit for the guy. When he complained, they replied that the site clearly prohibits advertizing of tabacco or tabacco-related advertisements.
Pretty sad and all, surely, but it gets better. Some people started to search Google and found links that contained links to links with websites which did sell 'e-cigarettes'. Within hours, the shouts of hypocrisy, power-abuse, murder, fire and kitten huffing were echoing over the Dutch interwebs. One of these ads was a pharmacy that actually had an obscure sale of an e-cigar on its site (but it didn't promote it on AdSense itself).
I'm personally disgusted by this: Google is a autonomous search engine. Google can't 24/7 check their ads, and they're doing a pretty decent job at keeping the contents semi-relevant (I actually click some of them!) and clean. They hold a large position on the internet, sure. They are the biggest provider of online advertisement, sure. But for gods' sake, can any large website please decide on their own content?
So, what's your thoughts? Is Google 'too big'? Is it 'injustice' to rule out this guys ads based on their policy? Heard of any other case like this (maybe a case in which the person sueing Google was sane)?
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