Google advertises on their own Gun site but not on Gun blogs!

SayUncle recently wrote here and here about how Google refuses to allow Google ads on gun blogs because….

the content of your site is largely focused on firearms, the site is not a good fit for the AdSense program.

I just realized that Google itself advertises on it’s own ’site largely focused on firearms’! The Google Groups rec.guns group!

Here is a screenshot of Google ads on one of the rec.guns posts:
Picture 26-1

If this isn’t a double standard I do not know what is.

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Steve Oct 8th 2007 misc Tags: , 5 Comments

5 Responses to “Google advertises on their own Gun site but not on Gun blogs!”

  1. Alcibiades McZombieon 08 Oct 2007 at 7:38 pm link comment

    Well, rec.guns is part of Usenet and Google just copies all the postings.

    Complaining to them may just cause them to delete the group from their archives.

  2. Steveon 08 Oct 2007 at 11:05 pm link comment

    I am not suggesting that google stops the rec.guns google group. I use google groups for all the Usenet newsgroups that I read, including rec.guns which I read daily.

    I just wanted to point out google’s double standards. They are happy to make advertisement dollars off their own gun related content, but not the content of others.

  3. SayUncle » More on Google ads and gunson 09 Oct 2007 at 12:08 pm link comment

    [...] in a bit of a back and forth with them. See here, here, here, and here. Well, Steve notes that google advertises at their own gun site, a google group. Hypocrisy for a [...]

  4. countertopon 09 Oct 2007 at 4:16 pm link comment

    “their own gun related content”

    Its not their content. They are just running usenet feeds. I suspect you can probably get all the usenet porn feeds off google too. Are you saying they therefore support child porn if they run one??

    Would you rather them go through and selectively edit which usenet feeds run and which don’t?? I think that sets a very dangerous precedent.

  5. Steveon 09 Oct 2007 at 9:35 pm link comment

    As I said in a previous comment I am not suggesting that they selectively filter Usenet newsgroups, but if they are really opposed to displaying ads on gun related content then they should filter the ads (not the content).

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