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MARCH 9, 2004
By Alex Salkever Google's Ads -- and Minuses [Page 2 of 2] TOP-RANKED. More troubling still is if Oceana hadn't screamed bloody murder, Google's role as arbiter might never have been made public. No one knows how many times Google has declined to run ads that many would have perceived as legitimate exercises of issue advocacy. Google doesn't post this information, but it has refused other ads it deems violate its editorial policy in the past. Will Google's policy make surfing the Internet more pleasant? In some sense, yes. A Google experience won't contain offensive or contentious language, at least on the advertising side. And it won't make anyone uncomfortable. But I'm not at all convinced that excising potential sources of conflict or heated debate will serve Google or the Internet well in the long run. Oceana and many other environmental groups rely heavily on such ads to raise money and gain support. Putting the kibosh on virtual protest could put a chill on such groups' cyberspace aspirations. Losing ad revenue from advocacy groups might not hurt Google's bottom line, but it could sure change how the search giant is perceived by the public. Of course, an inability to buy ads on Google hardly renders Oceana impotent. Anyone can find information about Oceana and alleged cruise-ship pollution quite easily on Google by typing in obvious search terms. And not everyone uses Google as their primary source of information. Some other prominent Web properties, including Yahoo! (YHOO ), have stated they would gladly carry the Oceana ads attached to cruise-industry keywords. And Oceana still occupies one of the top ranks of sites returned by Google queries for ocean pollution. FULL DISCLOSURE. Still, the tactic of giving people information they didn't seek is a time-honored form of protest and dissent that has helped fan the flames of democracy in the U.S and elsewhere. In other media, refusing advertisements on policy grounds is extremely rare unless those ads are clearly lewd, gross, or otherwise a public nuisance. Oceana's ads hardly qualify. Further, readers of a site such as the The New York Times almost certainly aren't clicking away with the explicit understanding they could be seeing a somewhat sanitized version of the dead-tree edition. At the very least, Google and other Web companies owe their surfers more information about what they do and why they do it. "The general rule should be one of transparency -- that someone should know what they don't know," says Palfrey. He thinks a good start might be some type of disclosure system whereby Google or other Web search engines list the organizations they have refused to sell ads to. That might be a good addendum to any editorial policy Google or other search engines have. And it certainly will help them maintain their credibility and usefulness as the key information suppliers on the Web.
 Salkever is technology editor for BusinessWeek Online. Follow his Nothing But Net column every week on BusinessWeek Online Edited by Patricia O'Connell
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