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I hate scams myself, but what gives google the right to judge on this matter? Shouldn't they be following the guidelines of local governments?

briandear 9y ago
LOL. How? By geolocation? Geolocation is exceptionally annoying and inaccurate. I am near Marseille but geolocation has me in Corsica and sometimes Malta. With VPN, I can instantly be anywhere I want. Google.com should be google.com — everyone that visits should see the same thing regardless of location. If I visit a shop in downtown Mountain View, they don’t re-arrange the shop because I am resident of France do they? Then why the hell do websites do that? If I want the French location of the Google “shop,” I will visit the shop in France — google.fr. Of course, Google France would need to follow French law, but why Google Mountain View would need to — it makes no sense. The consumer is choosing to visit the website. The consumer should have the choice if they want to visit California or Lyon.
- simias 9y ago
  They do all these things, I'm not sure what's your point. Of course google must abide by local jurisdiction if they want to make business here. Your search results and the ads your shown are tailored to your profile and your geolocation is part of your profile. It's completely irrelevant to the problem at hand however, it's their service and if they decide they don't want to advertise strawberry yogurt or brands containing the letter 'w' anymore then they can.
AJ007 9y ago
If someone loses all of their savings after clicking an ad served by Google, that isn’t very good for Google’s brand or the user’s ability to buy anything else.
yani 9y ago
They are a service provider and can decide what to allow and disallow on their platform.
- John_KZ 9y ago
  Not really. They can't decide to disallow bussiness run by black people or Slovenians. There's a law against that. For a large monopolies like that, it might be wise to expand anti-discrimination laws to include more things. At least that's my opinion. What if Google decides to disallow all mentions and all possible advertisements of a certain political party? What if it deletes all your emails without warning, because it deemed you as an uprofitable customer? Google is a privately run public utility at this point. Can the water company arbitrarily reject clients? Should it?
  - davidcbc 9y ago
    Scam artists aren't a protected class
  - noxToken 9y ago
    Then I think we would need to cross that bridge when we got there. As someone else said, people are losing non-trivial amounts of money to scams that are disguised as investments. You don't want ads for these scams when ad money is your life blood. I understand the line. Cryptocurrency isn't inherently bad. There's just a lot of bad actors out there giving it a bad name at the moment. Also, this isn't even close to racial or ethnic discrimination.
  - skocznymroczny 9y ago
    > What if Google decides to disallow all mentions and all possible advertisements of a certain political party? Unfortunately most people will say it's fine, as long as they ban the opposite party.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > What if Google decides to disallow all mentions and all possible advertisements of a certain political party? For a very broad definition of "party", it is already required to do this in many places for proscribed organisations, terrorist groups, and the Nazi Party. The sky has not fallen in. > What if it deletes all your emails without warning, because it deemed you as an uprofitable customer? They have a history of sudden, unaccountable, irretrievable account closures for a small number of legitimate users - every now and again one is mentioned on HN.
purple-again 9y ago
It's Google's house, that gives them the right. If they want to start returning a giant middle finger for any search query with the letter x in it they can and no one can stop them. The exodus of customers to Bing would stop them. Somehow I don't see an exodus of customer's from Google over their banning of cryptocurrencies from ads.

briandear 9y ago

LOL. How? By geolocation? Geolocation is exceptionally annoying and inaccurate. I am near Marseille but geolocation has me in Corsica and sometimes Malta. With VPN, I can instantly be anywhere I want. Google.com should be google.com — everyone that visits should see the same thing regardless of location. If I visit a shop in downtown Mountain View, they don’t re-arrange the shop because I am resident of France do they? Then why the hell do websites do that? If I want the French location of the Google “shop,” I will visit the shop in France — google.fr. Of course, Google France would need to follow French law, but why Google Mountain View would need to — it makes no sense. The consumer is choosing to visit the website. The consumer should have the choice if they want to visit California or Lyon.

simias 9y ago
They do all these things, I'm not sure what's your point. Of course google must abide by local jurisdiction if they want to make business here. Your search results and the ads your shown are tailored to your profile and your geolocation is part of your profile. It's completely irrelevant to the problem at hand however, it's their service and if they decide they don't want to advertise strawberry yogurt or brands containing the letter 'w' anymore then they can.

AJ007 9y ago

If someone loses all of their savings after clicking an ad served by Google, that isn’t very good for Google’s brand or the user’s ability to buy anything else.

yani 9y ago

They are a service provider and can decide what to allow and disallow on their platform.

John_KZ 9y ago
Not really. They can't decide to disallow bussiness run by black people or Slovenians. There's a law against that. For a large monopolies like that, it might be wise to expand anti-discrimination laws to include more things. At least that's my opinion. What if Google decides to disallow all mentions and all possible advertisements of a certain political party? What if it deletes all your emails without warning, because it deemed you as an uprofitable customer? Google is a privately run public utility at this point. Can the water company arbitrarily reject clients? Should it?
- davidcbc 9y ago
  Scam artists aren't a protected class
- noxToken 9y ago
  Then I think we would need to cross that bridge when we got there. As someone else said, people are losing non-trivial amounts of money to scams that are disguised as investments. You don't want ads for these scams when ad money is your life blood. I understand the line. Cryptocurrency isn't inherently bad. There's just a lot of bad actors out there giving it a bad name at the moment. Also, this isn't even close to racial or ethnic discrimination.
- skocznymroczny 9y ago
  > What if Google decides to disallow all mentions and all possible advertisements of a certain political party? Unfortunately most people will say it's fine, as long as they ban the opposite party.
- pjc50 9y ago
  > What if Google decides to disallow all mentions and all possible advertisements of a certain political party? For a very broad definition of "party", it is already required to do this in many places for proscribed organisations, terrorist groups, and the Nazi Party. The sky has not fallen in. > What if it deletes all your emails without warning, because it deemed you as an uprofitable customer? They have a history of sudden, unaccountable, irretrievable account closures for a small number of legitimate users - every now and again one is mentioned on HN.

purple-again 9y ago

It's Google's house, that gives them the right. If they want to start returning a giant middle finger for any search query with the letter x in it they can and no one can stop them. The exodus of customers to Bing would stop them. Somehow I don't see an exodus of customer's from Google over their banning of cryptocurrencies from ads.