Google's Blunder Revealling

[peter_d]

In this post, Google talk about how advertisers can counter bad press. With Adwords.

http://google-health-ads.blogspot.co...you-sicko.html

It doesn't really matter what people think of the movie Sicko, the interesting part is Googles apparent direct pitch to advertisers.

As Johnon astutely points out:

http://www.johnon.com/329/google-agency.html

I think this is the strongest evidence we have of Google playing Agency. Google speaking directly to the health business audience, saying they will help sway public perception using Google’s resources. It’s a pitch. From an Agency: Google.

So what’s an Agency to do? Heh heh.. thats pretty obvious. Organic Search Optimization (SEO). That’s right, SEO is the competitor to Google. SEO takes money away from Google. One might say, as Google increasingly exploits its market power to influence the searching and web surfing audience, Agencies need to be executing on organic SEO. Not only does it disintermediate Google, but it places Google into a precarious position - dares Google to manipulate the organic results set.

[WagerX]

Peter,
I read both, and it seems that G could very well position itself as a pseudo "PR" agency. It could do both censor and promote certain concepts.. kind of like spoon feeding the public what it wants to. (for the highest bidder)

So, the big G could be used as a political force? scary when you think about it.

Thanks for the articles!

[Ferre]

Funny that, the Google "health advertising blog" is trying to sell ad space to the health industry to counter search results for Michael Moore's new film "Sicko" which, appearently, shows a not-so-good side of that industry.

http://google-health-ads.blogspot.co...you-sicko.html

I must say this is smart and far-sighted marketing at Google, but at the same time this rises some ethical questions in my view.

http://google-health-ads.blogspot.co...you-sicko.html

Ethical or evil?

[chicgeek]

Ferre hon, you're a day late. I merged your post.

[Ferre]

Google is doing a lot of manipulation of the information available in the public domain lately, not to mention numerous political orientated videos they censor at their own youtube and google video sites.

Google is acting more and more as a filter for governments and industries in order to spoonfeed the general public their propaganda. You can see this in about all areas of google serps where the US government or the petro/pharmaceutical and war industries have their interests.

Analize this result for an example on how they manipulate the serps in favour of government funded propaganda websites;

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cannabis

Google is turning into a propaganda tool for the industrial and political establishment, maybe even more than "evil" Microsoft ever did.

[peter_d]

I notice the author wrote a retraction, of sorts.

By Sunday morning, Turner had apologized for her post, saying that the views she expressed on the documentary were her own and not the company's.

However, one can't help but wondering if that strategy is an internal modus operandi? Why else would a Google account planner say it?

I think Google need a higher level statement clearly defining the separation between church and state.

[peter_d]

Their official retraction is even more revealing. Not a good week for Google PR.

Philipp Lenssen has an interesting take on it:

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-07-02-n25.html

Google are knee deep in the agency business and that conflict of interest is not easily resolved.

As Google’s business is to “sell user demand” (to quote Patrick Keane, Google’s Head of Advertising Sales Strategy in 2004), the company as whole has the two conflicting tasks of selling ads to Acme Inc, while improving the relevancy of their web results to make users stay, which in turn can lower Acme Inc’s incentive to pay.

“Google ought to get back to just selling space and not trying to be an ad agency to these groups. That’s what ad agencies do, and they aren’t hit by the burden of also having to run supposedly unbiased information resources.”