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This is pretty normal, especially when their are lots of rival companies doing the same thing. I used to work for a food ordering company and they felt they had

This is pretty normal, especially when their are lots of rival companies doing the same thing. I used to work for a food ordering company and they felt they had no choice but to advertise their own name as rivals were using their brand name as a keyword. It wasn't cheap either, some weeks it could be as much as a few hundred euro. Personally, I feel it crosses am ethical line. As a customer if I search for foo.bar and the first couple of result are for rival companies then Google isn't providing me with the service it claims it would. And as a business I would be forced to effectively double spend. Firstly, I would be spending time and effort on SEO to get to the top of the rankings, and then spent again to get to the top of the adverts that are obfuscating the real search results. I know Google is a for-profit company operating in a free economy, but they still have to be ethical in what they do.

jiveturkey 7y ago
I'm not buying it. Why does Google "have to be" ethical? If Google has to be ethical, doesn't Uber have to be ethical? If Google and Uber have to be ethical, doesn't Blackwater/Xe/Academi have to be ethical?
- taborj 7y ago
  Since we're in a free market economy, we really should be forcing companies to be ethical by voting with our dollars (or, in today's online work, site visits). The problem is not enough people give it enough thought. > If Google and Uber have to be ethical, doesn't Blackwater/Xe/Academi have to be ethical? The problem with this argument is Blackwater/Xe/Academi serve a specific niche that inherently straddles the line of ethicality. They're not akin to Google or Uber; they don't have "general purpose" products that everyone needs/wants. Ergo it's not as black and white as Google and Uber (which in itself isn't as black and white as we'd like to think).
  - jiveturkey 7y ago
    Wait, do I hear you correctly? Google and Uber have to be ethical because we expect them to be, and Blackwater does not have to be ethical because we don't expect it of them?
    - fourthark 7y ago
      Expectations do matter?
    - taborj 7y ago
      > Wait, do I hear you correctly? Not precisely. Mainly I'm saying we can more easily affect Google and Uber's ethics than we can Blackwater, because we're generally not going after the services that Blackwater provides. Add to the fact that Blackwater doesn't always operate within societal norms, and the issue becomes complex. Is it ethical to kill someone? What if that someone is killing other people? Google and Uber don't have to worry about that. Blackwater does.

jiveturkey 7y ago

I'm not buying it. Why does Google "have to be" ethical? If Google has to be ethical, doesn't Uber have to be ethical? If Google and Uber have to be ethical, doesn't Blackwater/Xe/Academi have to be ethical?

taborj 7y ago
Since we're in a free market economy, we really should be forcing companies to be ethical by voting with our dollars (or, in today's online work, site visits). The problem is not enough people give it enough thought. > If Google and Uber have to be ethical, doesn't Blackwater/Xe/Academi have to be ethical? The problem with this argument is Blackwater/Xe/Academi serve a specific niche that inherently straddles the line of ethicality. They're not akin to Google or Uber; they don't have "general purpose" products that everyone needs/wants. Ergo it's not as black and white as Google and Uber (which in itself isn't as black and white as we'd like to think).
- jiveturkey 7y ago
  Wait, do I hear you correctly? Google and Uber have to be ethical because we expect them to be, and Blackwater does not have to be ethical because we don't expect it of them?
  - fourthark 7y ago
    Expectations do matter?
  - taborj 7y ago
    > Wait, do I hear you correctly? Not precisely. Mainly I'm saying we can more easily affect Google and Uber's ethics than we can Blackwater, because we're generally not going after the services that Blackwater provides. Add to the fact that Blackwater doesn't always operate within societal norms, and the issue becomes complex. Is it ethical to kill someone? What if that someone is killing other people? Google and Uber don't have to worry about that. Blackwater does.