Saturday, October 13, 2007

G*ogle now Deliberately Evil

G*ogle's censorship of conservative speech is becoming more and more blatant:

"Internet giant G*ogle has banned advertisements critical of MoveOn.org, the far-left advocacy group that caused a national uproar last month when it received preferential treatment from The New York Times for its "General Betray Us" message.

The ads banned by G*ogle were placed by a firm working for Republican Sen. Susan Collins' re-election campaign. Collins is seeking her third term. Earlier this week, G*ogle told Lance Dutson, president of Maine Coast Designs, that the ads he placed for Collins had been removed and would not be allowed to resume because they violated G*ogle's trademark policy.

G*ogle's Web site states, "G*ogle takes allegations of trademark infringement very seriously and, as a courtesy, we're happy to investigate matters raised by trademark owners." That suggests G*ogle acted in response to a complaint by MoveOn.org.

Source

Did you get that? Using the MoveOn name is a "trademark infringement"! There is absolutely no basis in law for that, however. It is just a figleaf to hide their move to the dark side.

As a private company, G*ogle can do what it likes within the law but there is one part of the law they may not be thinking of: Antitrust legislation. They now have a considerable dominance in at least some types of online advertising and if they annoy enough people, they could well be forced by the courts to divest themselves of their non-core businesses. And interfering with political advertising is definitely poison when it comes to antagonizing large numbers of people.

I normally give the name as "G*ogle" when I write critical things about them in the faint hope that what I say will escape the scrutiny of their team that tracks everything said about them. They appear to be evil enough to delete this site and it is within their power to do so if they don't like what I say. If this site DOES disappear some day, don't forget my mirror site

The comments here are hosted separately from the blog (Haloscan is an entirely different company) so what is said in the comments is less important but if commenters could see their way clear not to use the full name there either it might help.