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How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

560 points by AJ007 14y ago

jawns 14y ago
I'd be curious to know where Knife Depot is putting its advertising dollars now that it's not spending on AdWords.
- micahmcfarland 14y ago
  It looks like they haven't found another solution yet. FTA: > For that reason, we wanted to let you guys, loyal Cutting Edge readers and Knife Depot fans, know that you might not being seeing Knife Depot ads peppered across the Internet.
- smusumeche 14y ago
  Not the OP, but I do work for Knife Depot. There is no real viable alternative advertising company that can compare to Google. This is the heart of the problem.
joey_muller 14y ago
I predict Google will come around and open up your adwords account again. Don't give up on it if, of course, you want their traffic. Were you running product listing ads (PLAs) as well?
- alekseyk 14y ago
  Not a single person from Google will ever read the e-mails from your Adwords account unless you bring in thousands of dollars of revenue for them every day.
  - josefresco 14y ago
    I can attest to this claim. Even with monthly budgets in the tens-of-thousands of dollars (maybe $20K on Google and $15K on MSN/Yahoo!) you barely get noticed. The real issue (verging on comedic) is when they kill your keywords or ads, and then your volume drops to the level where they really ignore you thereby preventing you from getting the service you were (or wanted) prior.
  - nekitamo 14y ago
    I knew a person who used to spend $3000+ a day on Adwords who never got much attention from Google (reseller in the cosmetics niche). The only thing he mentioned is that at some point Google assigned him an Adwords account rep. He followed the advice of the account rep and got all the ads and keywords suggested by the rep banned. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. Eventually the person's main account was banned. Last I talked to him he was creating a bunch of fake accounts and running cloaked campaigns. It was much easier for him to be non-compliant on Adwords than compliant.
  - msrpotus 14y ago
    Trust me, as someone who's run very large advertising campaigns, having someone from Google read your email doesn't mean they'll do anything. They have ridiculous rules for larger advertisers, as well.
  - MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
    Usually when a post about Google shows up on the HN front page, someone from Google shows up in the comments and takes some common-sense action. They are probably figuring out how to handle it now.
ImprovedSilence 14y ago
very slowly, but very, very surly, google is doing a complete 180 on "don't be evil". I think the slow pressure of being a public company is really going to strangle out much of the "good side" of Google. Everything they've done in the past 1.5yrs has been terrible for their users.
- jonknee 14y ago
  Since AdWords has been large (many years) there have been stories of unfair treatment. The same goes for AdSense. Google keeps its sauce secret which is extremely frustrating in these types of scenarios. It's sort of like Apple's App Approval process, very frustrating to be on the wrong side of. It's not crazy to believe that a store solely selling knives will receive more attention from the Knife Patrol in the AdWords Q&A department than stores that sell hundreds of different categories. These things can also take time, no one notices when Knife Depot stops advertising, but if an account rep loses a multi-million dollar account like Amazon there will be heads rolling. Knife Depot just got their notice last month, I'd wait a bit before calling foul.
  - josefresco 14y ago
    Don't hold your breath for fair treatment. We thought this same thing (after some of our clients keywords were banned), and than day after day I monitored AdWords results to see if our competitors using the same tactics were removed and let's just say I got tired of checking.
  - deleted 14y ago
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- analog 14y ago
  Hang on, what? Refusing to advertise knives which are clearly intended to be used as weapons is 'evil' now is it?
  - Anechoic 14y ago
    You know we're talking about assisted-opening knives and not switchblades, right?
rdl 14y ago
I'm in favor of banning porn ads (generally), since those tend to be offensive to a lot of people and also are highly correlated with spammy behavior, but I'd be tempted to boycott a vendor who prohibited weapons ads for any reason other than legal compliance. Amazon is pretty reasonable (knives are fine, firearms accessories are fine, but firearms and ammunition are out due to compliance issues). Google has no excuse.
- tjic 14y ago
  > Amazon is pretty reasonable (knives are fine, firearms accessories are fine, but firearms and ammunition are out As a target shooter, I don't find this any more reasonable than a gay person might find "personal ads are fine, but not gay personal ads". All too often our definition of "reasonable" is "gores HIS ox but not mine".
  - ori_b 14y ago
    You ignored the important part: "Due to compliance issues". I'm not familiar with the legal issues. However, it is perfectly reasonable for Amazon to comply with the law. Perhaps the laws are stupid, but that's not Amazon's fight.
    - wyager 14y ago
      The compliant issues you mention (for the most part) do not exist. There are very few extra legal limitations for selling ammunition over the internet. These legal limitations could be shifted to third-party retailers, with Amazon as a middleman only. There are literally no extra legal limitations or regulations for a company selling (non-firearm) firearm parts, which Amazon does not allow. Selling ammunition requires roughly the same amount of legal red tape as selling knives or tasers (which Amazon already does).
      - rdl 14y ago
        I didn't realize Amazon didn't allow non-firearm firearms parts, since I've bought ~10k in knoxx stocks, slings, sidesaddles, ammo holders, holsters, etc. through their marketplace. It's possible they just don't enforce it very well. Apparently their policy (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200277700 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...) allows a lot of things, but not other things, in a not entirely consistent way. Primers and brass are ok, but not bullets. Stocks are fine, but not barrels. wtf. There are some parts where Amazon would have liability. Magazines, for instance, especially since Amazon likes to be able to warehouse items wherever it finds most convenient. 30 round magazines would be really complex given that some states ban them.
josefresco 14y ago
Being an AdWords veteran (having managed campaigns for several clients) all I could do was nod my head grumble under my breath about how this is "business as usual" for Google. One of my clients who was selling in the health market had this and other seemingly "unfair" treatments happen again and again over the years. All the while Google was taking money from Canadian "pharmacies" and allowing big brand competitors to violate the same rules they were coming down on my clients for. The kick is that sometimes you just luck out. Your ads are reviewed by another (anonymous) staffer who doesn't interpret the rules in the same way. We found the best way to avoid issues like this was: never edit an existing approved ad. Seems silly but we cringed each time we had to edit or submit a new ad knowing that some random reviewer would roll the dice and deliver a verdict. Finally however Google banned most of our most effective keywords, while at the same time allowing our competitors (both larger and smaller) to continue on without interruption.
- GFischer 14y ago
  Google ads in the health sector is tough, we tried advertising a medication/pill management software (for keeping track of times, stock, etc. with a twist), and Google was extremely frustrating in randomly restricting our keywords, and we had to repeatedly assert that we were NOT advertising medications. They did not ban our account or anything, they were happy to take a few of our dollars :) (we didn't get to the MVP stage, just an embarassingly bad landing page), but traffic was a lot less than I expected (and I can't seem to tweak our ads to stay out of Indian pages, we wanted U.S. only). At least we only paid per clicks.
  - josefresco 14y ago
    Yeah I lost count on how many times I had to tell Google my client was not a pharmacy and not offering any prescription medications (even though we were bidding on terms that related to that market segment). I understand (and can tolerate) false positives in regards to software but there was no excuse for the uneven application by human editors of the guidelines.
    - 14y ago
alekseyk 14y ago
Google is a two faced company who only cares about money. And unlike other companies, they only care about BIG business money not small business money. I know that all too well, they banned one of the web sites I owned for 'adult' content on first strike while competitors who had 10x the traffic (and 10x the reports of user uploaded adult content) remained in their network. I never spoke to a single person there, always a robot. That was back in 2003. Now my headphone jack failed on brand new Nexus 4 and I never heard back from Google at all. This will bite them in the ass sooner or later.
- oijaf888 14y ago
  NEXUS 4 POWER USER RIGHT HERE
brador 14y ago
Solution B: start second site with the questioned knives. Link from main site. Keep adwords pointing to main site. ?
xutopia 14y ago
Is it really illegal to own a switch blade but legal to purchase and own assault rifles?
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Knives, nunchucks, brass knuckles, etc. are usually covered by state level laws, from what I've seen, and the legality varies widely. Firearms are a slightly different story, since the 2nd Amendment very specifically protects firearms ownership. So yes, it is possible that somewhere or other, a switch blade knife is illegal while an "assault rifle" is legal. I saw "assault rifle" in quotes, because most people talking about these issues have no clue what an "assault rifle" really is, and are repeating garbage they heard from various anti-gun activist groups, who routinely use a totally bogus definition of "assault rifle" or "assault weapon". It's important to understand that owning a real assault rifle (that is, one capable of select-fire / bust-mode / fully automatic operation) IS legal but it's VERY highly regulated, VERY expensive, and you can only - as a civilian - purchase weapons manufactured before 1986.
  - Anechoic 14y ago
    since the 2nd Amendment very specifically protects firearms ownership I've seen folks use that rationale, but the 2A doesn't say "firearms" it says "arms" - presumably "knives, nunchucks, brass knuckles, etc" would fall under that, although that's clearly not how it's been interpreted.
    - mindcrime 14y ago
      That's a fair point, but - for whatever reason - the way it's interpreted in practice seems to be mainly (if not exclusively) about firearms. Come to think of it, I don't know why that is, and I'm not arguing that it's correct. Anyway, the real point is that there seems to be a lot more variation in laws concerning the legality of owning knives, nunchucks, brass-knuckles, etc., than there is about guns. Guns may be more highly regulated in general, but I don't know of a single state where private ownership of, say, a pistol, is illegal. But I'm pretty sure there are states where switch-blade knives are. But I'm working off memory here, so maybe I'm wrong.
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
You cannot wield the kind of economic power Google does and not be evil, at least for the working definition many people have of "evil". We've put a huge hunk of our intellectual and economic capital under the control of a marketing company. I really, really like Google, but I don't see this situation as being stable over a period of decades. Maybe 5-10 more years or so, but not a lot longer. These kinds of decisions, where we pick economic winners and losers, are political decisions, no matter who makes them. (Personally I abhor making them, but that doesn't change what they are). These knife guys have representatives. Indeed, every small business Google has run over has democratic representation. Each year Google continues to make these decisions the political hue and cry will increase. This can't go on forever like this. "Don't be evil" was a great slogan, but its days are numbered. Perhaps over. Side note: one of the ways I can tell Google's power has grown too large is the elliptical way many commenters have of criticizing it. They're unhappy with its actions, perhaps even livid, but it's always a tone of "Golly! This is really unfortunate and I'm sure nobody at Google really meant to do this, but...." This is the same way you'd criticize a king, somebody you are beholden to. "Golly! I know you, the king, are not at fault, but some of these advisers of yours must have accidentally goofed up somewhere..." Whereas if Dell, the electric company, or the garage down the street screws up in your eyes? Different tone entirely.
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  The worst part is that Google controls both the ads and search, and free clicks just happened to be under attack. Obviously Google wants you to advertise and search updates can do that. No one audits them at all despite them essentially controlling online commerce.
- scarmig 14y ago
  As they say, the Cossacks work for the Czar. They have always worked for the Czar. If a big institution screws you over but has found a clever way of perpetually evading or delegating away vocal blame for that... they're still responsible, unless they're fixing the system in the very-near term. If the resources aren't there to fix the system, that's because they've consciously chosen not to allocate those resources.
onemorepassword 14y ago
Oh, the irony of publicizing the same knives via YouTube, the Google property that censors boobies but allows you to promote machine guns to a global audience...
- kyrra 14y ago
  (At least in the US) weapons and violence are fine in video/audio format, while naked people are not. I'm not sure how much this has to do with Google than it does the regulations imposed by the FCC and social norms.
  - viggity 14y ago
    the fcc has nothing to do with it. there are plenty of places on the internet that have pr0n (legally). it is more about american social norms.
- wyager 14y ago
  Why not both?
jordoh 14y ago
This seems like a pretty clear-cut case of assuming that there is some intentional malice or favoritism in actions that are the result of an automated system. - Google adds some terms like "assisted opening knife" and "assist folding knife" so they are recognized as prohibited knife ads. Adding these terms could very well have been automated based on the terms having a strong association with other terms found alongside prohibited items. - knife-depots' account suddenly contains X% disallowed knife ads, based on the new terms - where X is relatively large percentage. Account automatically disabled. - Amazon and Walmart also have X% disallowed knife ads, but X is an extremely small percent of their overall number of items. Accounts remain active. Fortunately, AdWords is one of the few Google properties where you can actually get a human on the phone and have them intervene with the automated results (though it can certainly take a lot of back and forth, in my personal experience). In a more general sense, this is something that you constantly run in to if you have your automated systems performing any action that a user could view as punitive. I've yet to see a site that was open about automated actions being such - likely because they don't want to make it too easy to automate getting around the automated rules - but it does seem like there is a reasonable amount of explanation of the system that could diffuse these assumptions of persecution.
- ISL 14y ago
  "- Amazon and Walmart also have X% disallowed knife ads, but X is an extremely small percent of their overall number of items. Accounts remain active." And the little guy, selling the same product in competition with the big guy, gets killed. It's often better to have a level playing field.
  - jordoh 14y ago
    How do you level the playing field in this case? One account has 50% disallowed items (50 of 100) and another account has 0.005% disallowed items (50 of 1,000,000). You could bias _against_ large accounts by banning when they reach a fixed number of disallowed items - but then you let little guys (or any big guy that makes lots of small accounts) skate by under some arbitrary limit.
pud 14y ago
Whenever I ban a user from one of my sites for an infraction, he invariably points to several other infracting users and says "well why do they get to post porn (or ads for weapons or whatever) and I don't?" The reason is because I didn't catch the other users. Or their infraction isn't as bad. While I feel bad for the knife company, I also know dealing with user-generated content (like these ads) is hard.
- ScottWhigham 14y ago
  I think so much of these types of actions stem from growing pains. It all stars with defining a policy (no assisted open knife ads!). You then have managers telling their employees to enforce it, but the TOS hasn't been updated and the front-line employees do not have the tools to really identify who is actively infringing. Once the front-line employees come back with dozens of complaints (or users complain), the management realizes the mistakes and things get righted. I'm sure it's no different for you - once you create the policy, you experience the problems implementing the policy that then force/cause you to create the tools/etc.
- kybernetyk 14y ago
  > dealing with user-generated content (like these ads) is hard. That's not really an excuse because no one forces Google to be in the user generated ad business. They want money from advertisers so they should do all they can to offer the best service possible.
  - kkowalczyk 14y ago
    If the advertiser is not happy with Google's service, they are free to use another service. "no one forces you to do X" argument cuts both ways?
    - cooldeal 14y ago
      Google has such a large percentage of search traffic that your competitors who are not flagged will have a huge advantage over you.
    - 14y ago
davebees 14y ago
> We’d also been careful to not ever violate Google’s Adwords weapons policy, which prohibits “the promotion of knives, such as butterfly knives, (balisongs) and switchblades.” Sounds like they were promoting knives, and hence violating the policy.
- smusumeche 14y ago
  I'm not the OP, but I do work for Knife Depot. We have advertised with Google for over 8 years and they ONLY prohibit butterfly, balisong, and switchblade/automatic knives. We are within their guidelines.
yalogin 14y ago
I just realized that Adwords is Google's equivalent of the iOS app store. They review stuff and either remove or block certain "items". I cannot help but wonder how civil and accomodating the people effected by the adwords changes are compared to the developers effected by the iOS app store. Is it just because the developers know how to make noise better than the non-tech ones?
radtad 14y ago
Search 'assisted opening knives' and you won't see any ads about such knives EXCEPT for Amazon. You will also see "Shop for Assisted Opening Knives on Google" which, if you follow the link, will show you a nice assortment of about 14k assisted opening knives. This feels like an abuse of monopoly power.
- radtad 14y ago
  wow, now ALL of the ads are gone, which to me has the effect of making the google shopping banner EVEN MORE noticeable.
- hamax 14y ago
  I'm seeing adds for cabelas.com but not for amazon.
ritonlajoie 14y ago
The real issue with these blogs is that there is no way to get to the main website easily.
samd 14y ago
What's really important is this line: "For that reason, we wanted to let you guys, loyal Cutting Edge readers and Knife Depot fans, know that you might not being seeing Knife Depot ads peppered across the Internet." If you don't get to advertise with Google you basically don't get to advertise on the Internet. That's a powerful monopoly, one they've had for years, and that's the real story here. You have to deal with Google and all their idiosyncratic/evil/whatever behavior because there's no alternative.
- dhimes 14y ago
  Indeed- and now they are building internet infrastructure, cars, and eyeware.
- smusumeche 14y ago
  Bingo.
- gwern 14y ago
  People were criticizing the infrastructure analogy made for Google Reader recently; so you can imagine how amused I was, while reading Levy's _In The Plex_, to read this bit: > While some Googlers felt singled out unfairly for the attention, the more measured among them understood it as a natural consequence of Google’s increasing power, especially in regard to distributing and storing massive amounts of information. “It’s as if Google took over the water supply for the entire United States,” says Mike Jones, who handled some of Google’s policy issues. “It’s only fair that society slaps us around a little bit to make sure we’re doing the right thing.” (In a part generally about advertising, fittingly enough.)
DividesByZero 14y ago
In the example video both knives seem like they do pretty much exactly the same thing?
deleted 14y ago
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torya 14y ago
of all people google is too cheap to have a real live person on the phone doing customer service and because of that you have to email them and wait. you would think a multibillion dollar company can afford to hire some callers, but no, they are too stingy. it is a good strategy if you own google stock though, don't ever expect any service from google though.
corresation 14y ago
http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/176077?hl=en http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/176077?hl=en Company tried to sell a product that Google prohibits. Where is the story here? Trying to say "well they do it too!" is not and is never a valid complaint, just as it wasn't in primary school -- their day will come. Further the desperate reaching to make Google evil is a stretch given that doing this can only possibly lose them money (favoring the "big guys" isn't rational for a bid-based service, where the highest bid gets Google the most money, regardless of the vendor). The only real story here is that Google managed to achieve such dominance in advertising (though it certainly isn't as absolute as some are pretending).
- caf 14y ago
  The "big guys" sell a lot more products in a lot more categories, so are presumably putting in a much larer number of bids - it is not hard to believe that Google sees a lot more revenue from Amazon than some random knife shop.
  - corresation 14y ago
    I'm entirely sure that Amazon spends more. But for that keyword whoever bids the most spends the most. Google optimizes by the keyword, which of course they should, just as companies like Amazon don't bid on keywords because they're benevolent, but because they want to optimize their own return. Removing players from the market cannot possibly serve Google's financial interest, and that conspiratorial angle makes absolutely no sense. Because their seems to be some confusion about how bid systems work (including by the dead post below), if Amazon and others outbid this company, netting more for Google, this would be a non-issue because you would have never seen this company's products. It is notable that Google absolutely bans knives in the context of weapons, full stop (the author of the linked posting seems confused and thinks "such as" gives the specific culprits, when those are merely examples). This company may have authored their ads in a weapons manner, or targeted weapons-type keywords -- the sort of nonsense that gets Google sued by a bunch of state Attorneys down the road, everyone clucking about how evil Google is selling (indirectly) the knife that the kid used to do some evil. EDIT: The only possible favoritism that Google might be showing her is in the context of legal responsibility. If some random knife site sells a kid a knife via a Adwords ad, everyone will come gunning for Google. If Walmart sells a knife to some kid, everyone will go gunning for Walmart, regardless of how they got the initial contact.
score 14y ago
It's easy to see why Google banned these guys and not Amazon.com or Walmart. I could sum it up in one word: trust. Amazon and Walmart have it, these guys don't. Personally, if I'm going to buy a knife, I'll buy it from Amazon. I trust them on a whole bunch of levels that I don't trust these guys. Is it fair? I've been doing SEO / PPC for over a decade and its never, ever been fair.
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robomartin 14y ago
In the context of their world-wide monopoly, at one point we have to start asking if Google has the right to censor or control anything this way. Don't get me wrong, I hate the idea of government telling anyone what they can and cannot do. Massive monopolies is one place where I can see a need for some kind of legal intervention. The reason obviously being that a large monopoly has no competing entity to force it to modify its behavior. While it is true that Google tries to "clean-up" their search I think this is almost an arrogant stance. How can a few hundred people be in charge of deciding what you and I should and should not see? Methinks we should be given control. If I don't like weapons of any kind I ought to be able to go to my control panel and exclude them from my results. It should be my choice, not theirs. That said, these "assisted opening" blades are an obvious example of exploiting a loophole in the laws. For all intents and purposes they are switch blades. The end result is exactly the same: Open a knife very quickly. Then there's the whole argument about how much sense it makes to granularly ban stuff like this. I have no clue as to how much crime out there can be attributed directly to switch blades. Probably not much at all. Although I do remember that knives are on par with certain types of guns in terms of murders per year. Circling back, the "Google Syndrome" is one that is constantly growing in threat level. I've said this many time. I like their services, but this business of killing your account auto-magically with no real business process in place to deal with the problems is just total bullshit. At one point it has to stop. I have no clue what's going to make that happen, but it sure seems to be leaving a path of destruction behind it. The best thing we can do is stop using every new Google service they throw at us. I know, it's hard to let go of the free drugs, but look at what you are promoting and decide if this is what you want in the future five times over.
jroseattle 14y ago
As more of these stories happen, Google adwords will simply consist of the big-brand marketers. There is something I trust in this process -- the market. Companies like knife-depot are specialty, niche, hyper-focused on their particular product: knives. From their post, it's obvious they know those products inside and out. WalMart, Target, Amazon? They don't know squat about those products. If I want a specialty product such as the knife described in the article, I trust a specialty shop much more than the bulk-focused vendors. As Google runs more of the specialty folks away and caters more to the big brands, I would venture they'll see click-through activity commensurate with that change. And that's called opportunity in that space. Nice going, Google.
conductr 14y ago
Google's not the only one who bans you. I'm at work: "This Websense category is filtered: Weapons." Yes, I work for a big company that filters the web and it does suck for me... but since a lot of people shop online while at work, it also sucks for you
danhodgins 14y ago
If I was Knife Depot, I would focus on brainstorming a single opt-in offer they could use to have all their marketing and advertising channels function as a funnel for growing their email list. "1 Badass Knife Per Week" is an opt-in offer that would get my attention, even though I'm not a knife guy. I expand on this idea in this post: http://www.tinylever.com/one-badass-knife-per-week http://www.tinylever.com/one-badass-knife-per-week Why be dependent on Google for your sales? Pay them once up front to help grow your list, and you'll be able monetize each subscriber for their lifetime using email - a FREE channel you own and control 100%. A list is really where it's at, but to make list-building work you need a single opt-in offer that will cause people to sign up on the spot. If you'd like some ideas for crafting your opt in offer, reach out right now by email: dan [at] tinylever [dot] com
anigbrowl 14y ago
I watched his video that purported to explain the difference between a switchblade and a spring assisted knife. As far as I can tell the only difference is that the location of the switch has changed. This is a distinction without a substantive difference. So yo would need a slightly different hand movement to trigger this alternative spring-assisted knife. Big deal; as someone who used to like knives enough to have a small collection, I think I could get the necessary movement down in 10 or 15 minutes if someone handed me one of these I have nothing against this guy promoting his business, but this is a switchblade as far as I'm concerned, just a slightly different design.
- mtraven 14y ago
  According to their site the assisted-opening knives are legal in all states, whereas switchblades aren't, so there must be some meaningful distinction (unless the law just hasn't caught up yet).
  - badgar 14y ago
    The "meaningful distinction" is that "assisted-opening" knives require a non-zero amount of force in the direction that the knife actually opens. Switchblades can just have a button. The former takes a few minutes of practice to open smoothly, the latter doesn't. There's no reason to buy an assisted-opening knife if switchblades are also available. So yes, they absolutely exist to exploit a loophole. Loopholes in laws do tend to create (often short-lived) markets.
    - anigbrowl 14y ago
      The former takes a few minutes of practice to open smoothly, the latter doesn't. Having once owned a switchblade, it takes a bit of practice to hold it such a way that you can operate it but not block the path of the outswinging blade with your fingers. Watching the demonstration in this video, there doesn't seem to be any more force employed in operating the switch that there was in pressing the button. I agree that this is probably a short-lived thing that will fade away following a minor regulatory clarification.
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ams6110 14y ago
Comcast is doing something similar, they have banned advertising from legitimate, legal gun shops, but of course continue to carry copious amounts of programming featuring glorified, gratuitous gun violence. I want to cancel my Comcast account; they used to be my only option but very recently AT&T is now offering their "U-verse" internet in my neighborhood.
pja 14y ago
I suspect the short question + answer is: are you buying Amazon or Walmart levels of AdWords? No? Well, congratulations, you're SOL. It's no wonder that Google has started pouring large amounts of effort into lobbying in the last few years, because it's precisely this combination of de facto monopoly combined with poor treatment of customers who have no-where else to go that leads (eventually) to legislation or possibly even break-up of the company in question. To paraphrase a famous quote: you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you, whether you like it or not.
JumpCrisscross 14y ago
There may be merit in splitting Google's Search and Advertising businesses. Advertising would pay Search (or Bing or Duck Duck Go) to place ads in its results via an API. Search would indiscriminately host ads posted to it by ad brokers, of which Advertising would be one. Search would be freed from having to police advertisements. Advertising's policing would be checked by competitive pressure. In a stylised securities transaction we have customers, brokers, and an exchange. Customers have choices between brokers. Brokers, of which there are many, exercise discretion in how much capability they give which customers. The exchange, of which there is one, exercises discretion in which brokers it transacts with, but not which customers get to transact on it. This is important since the exchange has something approaching monopoly power. It also means the exchanges aren't liable for non-compliant customers - the brokers are. Skip back to Google. Search is the exchange and Advertising is the broker. The exchange only permits one broker. Naturally, the broker-exchange is liable for policing non-compliant and stupid customers (barring a very large expansion in government which would permit it to monitor all transactions going through Google). It has also extended its exchange monopoly power to its broker. We love disintermediation. But intermediaries facilitate checks on concentration in a competitive system.
mgkimsal 14y ago
I can imagine one of the justifications for letting walmart and others get away with it is because they're big, but more specifically, their ad budgets are big. But... so what? Where else are they going to go? Bing? Mapquest? Perhaps if every major large retailer in the US shaved off a few percent of their ad budget away from Google and gave it to one competitor, there'd be a slim fighting chance of actually upsetting Google's dominance, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case. Relatedly(?), MS has avoided hardware for a long time... ostensibly under the guise of "not upsetting their partners". But... what would the partners do? Bundle Linux? In mobile, they're sort of doing this, but hardware partners left MS not because MS was competing in the hardware business against them - they left because the option (android) was better.
aymeric 14y ago
I got into the same situation with my outsourcing company http://taskarmy.com http://taskarmy.com They suspended our account although we made the changes necessary to comply with their terms of service (you can't guarantee 1st page in SEO services). In the meantime, some of our competitors can still advertise their services. Since my account has been suspended, it massively slowed down the growth and I couldn't a better replacement.
tehwalrus 14y ago
(from UK, and happy to accept your downvotes): I'm shocked that people litteraly sell knives designed to hurt people on the internet, and that people on HN come to the defence of these arms dealers. I assumed this was about kitchen knives when I clicked on the link. The US constitution was written with a right to bear arms so people could overthrow the government, not protect themselves from criminals. Since then, that government has entrenched power to the point where it would be nearly impossible for even another state to take it down, let alone a group of armed civilians - thus rendering the constitutional clauses irrelevant to their original purpose. (note to secret services: no, I don't want to overthrow governments or start wars, I'm talking hypothetically.) In the rest of the developed world where weapons are generally banned, as they are in the UK, criminals simply don't use weapons on civilians (apart from high value targets, perhaps) because the penalties for doing so are so harsh. Criminals literally throw their guns away in a chase, rather than use them on the police/get caught with them. Police are generally unarmed, apart from specially trained units (dawn raids, at airports, etc). This is the sole reason I would never ever consider living in the USA - the risk from a) criminals, b) civilian "heros" and c) the police themselves, all of whom are armed to the teeth, legally. Terrifying.
- score 14y ago
  Welcome to the US, where the rights of the individual override the rights and safety of the whole. Here in the US, tolerance to do and say "whatever the hell I want" is demanded but rarely returned.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  The only difference between my assisted opening knife and my paring knife is that the former is safe to put into my pocket. Same size, same blade shape, one lives in my kitchen cabinet and the other lives in my toolbag. I don't use the later for food because I don't want it to get sticky. How exactly does that make the later "designed to hurt people"?
  - Nitramp 14y ago
    the former is safe to put into my pocket The spring is the difference. A switchblade (and "assisted opening" is just an obvious circumvention of those being banned) can be easily carried concealed and is a very deadly weapon in fights. That's why they are outlawed - legislation has decided that their potential utility (takes a second less to open?) doesn't outweigh their general danger to the public. Note that all kinds of easy to carry knifes are not illegal, like hunting knifes or swiss army knifes.
cm2012 14y ago
Does anybody else notice that they now OWN Assisted Opening Knives in the organic SERPS? Making Google ads, while useful, not as vital.
deleted 14y ago
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capo 14y ago
Why is this sort of post even on HN, not to mention the front page? and why is this thread dominated by idiotic language about "evil" and "kings" and incoherent babbling about politics and democratic representation?! and suddenly everyone is a law scholar. I blame Matt Cutts' occasional appearances for the subsequent flocking of SEO sorts here. This post doesn't belong on HN, certainly not on the front page.
- reader5000 14y ago
  The top comment is the most batshit comment I have ever read on HN. Interesting crowd shift going on.
- throwaway420 14y ago
  > I blame Matt Cutts' occasional appearances for the subsequent flocking of SEO sorts here. This post doesn't belong on HN, certainly not on the front page. Your anger is misplaced. The blame is solely on Google for not having an adequate customer service department. When Google has arbitrary decided that your business is in violation of some of its rules, you end up falling into a Kafkaesque nightmare of form responses and then you stop getting even those. The only way to get a response from Google in these cases is to LITERALLY get a popular post on Reddit or Hacker News. That's why small businesses post about this stuff here. Don't blame them. Blame Google for not providing a decent customer service center because they want to shave a tiny bit of expenses.
  - janesvilleseo 14y ago
    I partly agree about the customer service issue. However, they have really been stepping up as of late (if you are an AdWords customer that is). However the striking thing for me is the "voiced" doublestandard. Cutts is pretty consistent on the Organic side of things, but I don't think I have seen the same from their AdWords department. Which is a shame as it does need to be policed.
  - capo 14y ago
    So HN has to be the consumer service?! that's not what this place is about.
tn13 14y ago
There is one more point we all might be missing here. This is not just about knief-depot. It is unreasonable to believe that someone at Google said, "Hey, I dont like these knief-depot people, let us screw them to benefit Amazon". Likely case is this. People at Amazon (or put other large company spending significant amounts with Google) maintains a dashboard and does a competitor analysis to find out that knief-depot is doing better than them and hence there is scope for screwing this smaller company. They talk to google and create problems from them. And I dont think they have singled out knife depot alone, but they have done this with many more on the slippary slope. This means that Google does have some non-transparent ways of doing business when with comes to Adwords. This is not just bad for Knife-depot but bad for all of us.
arbuge 14y ago
Google suspends AdWords acconts without much recourse all the time, as a quick search on "adwords account suspended" shows. Doesn't matter if they're paying customers, etc. The thorny part about it is that the guidelines that can lead to suspension change over time and deleting ads that are no longer in compliance might not safeguard your account. I've known account holders that got suspended retroactively for ads that are no longer in compliance, even though these ads were actually deleted before the guidelines changed. The point seems to be non-negotiable with Google though. This can be pretty tragic for many small businesses since Google accounts for such a huge percentage of search traffic. Larger customers typically have dedicated account reps who I'm guessing might be able to help in these situations.
jccalhoun 14y ago
"After some deep thinking, we decided that serving our customer base, who legally buy large amounts of assisted-opening knives, was more important than continuing to advertise with Google. For this reason, we decided to not remove the knives and forgo our Google Adwords account" I'm not clear. Did Knife Depot remove their ads or did Google?
akproxy 14y ago
Waahaa!!! The beauty of Hacker News! It started at Google Adwords and is now going to Communist China and Stalinist Russia!! Just have a look at the comment threads. Not bad!
TomGullen 14y ago
Here's one possible explanation. Amazon is a high value customer so Google carefully reviewed their t&c to ensure their selling policies are in line with googles own policies. They confidently know that amazon won't sell anything illegal, and that amazon have measures in place to deal with rogue sellers on their service. They know amazon has been around for a long time and are trusted by google and the general public. They know that if amazon screws up, amazon would probably take most of the heat. With this information google considers amazon to be a low risk user of their services. Knife depot is a small customer, and google cant justify the time to review your policies and risk that accepting you as a customer entails. If you screw up, google would probably take a large part of the blame. The popular alternative hypothesis seem to be that google is pure evil.
- senegoid 14y ago
  This is a fair comment. A company of Google's scale simply cannot monitor every Adwords account for compliance, so they are being safe. It doesn't mean this advertiser isn't untrustworthy or loose, just that Google cannot effectively monitor advertisers of this size. I also can't understand the mantra of 'don't be evil' still gets mentioned. This is nothing more than cute brand association with no real grounding in truth. Google are a public company who can be evil. It is like the platitude that Google shuns product managers and welcomes engineers, implying that Google products sell themselves because of rock-solid engineering (totally disregarding the fact that Google have an aggressive sales force and have spent billions on marketing activities, both directly and indirectly).
raheemm 14y ago
Seriously, there is a need for a startup to disrupt the hell out of google.
Stevenuteral 14y ago
Hey i am a new user here and i am not able to submit links that why sorrry i am posting here but the latest news is this, Please any past user submit this news let the world know about this..... Emma Stone Twitter account hijacked by Hackers http://www.hackersnewsbulletin.com/2013/03/emma-stone-twitter-account-hijacked-by.html http://www.hackersnewsbulletin.com/2013/03/emma-stone-twitte...
- mannu4u4u 14y ago
  Ok i will try my friend and Emma wow i really love her....
sroerick 14y ago
This is great PR.
notdan 14y ago
Ironically I can't view this "because it has been categorized "Weapons;Shopping"" by the corporate firewall...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

560 points by AJ007 14y ago

jawns 14y ago

I'd be curious to know where Knife Depot is putting its advertising dollars now that it's not spending on AdWords.

micahmcfarland 14y ago
It looks like they haven't found another solution yet. FTA: > For that reason, we wanted to let you guys, loyal Cutting Edge readers and Knife Depot fans, know that you might not being seeing Knife Depot ads peppered across the Internet.
smusumeche 14y ago
Not the OP, but I do work for Knife Depot. There is no real viable alternative advertising company that can compare to Google. This is the heart of the problem.

joey_muller 14y ago

I predict Google will come around and open up your adwords account again. Don't give up on it if, of course, you want their traffic. Were you running product listing ads (PLAs) as well?

alekseyk 14y ago
Not a single person from Google will ever read the e-mails from your Adwords account unless you bring in thousands of dollars of revenue for them every day.
- josefresco 14y ago
  I can attest to this claim. Even with monthly budgets in the tens-of-thousands of dollars (maybe $20K on Google and $15K on MSN/Yahoo!) you barely get noticed. The real issue (verging on comedic) is when they kill your keywords or ads, and then your volume drops to the level where they really ignore you thereby preventing you from getting the service you were (or wanted) prior.
- nekitamo 14y ago
  I knew a person who used to spend $3000+ a day on Adwords who never got much attention from Google (reseller in the cosmetics niche). The only thing he mentioned is that at some point Google assigned him an Adwords account rep. He followed the advice of the account rep and got all the ads and keywords suggested by the rep banned. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. Eventually the person's main account was banned. Last I talked to him he was creating a bunch of fake accounts and running cloaked campaigns. It was much easier for him to be non-compliant on Adwords than compliant.
- msrpotus 14y ago
  Trust me, as someone who's run very large advertising campaigns, having someone from Google read your email doesn't mean they'll do anything. They have ridiculous rules for larger advertisers, as well.
- MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
  Usually when a post about Google shows up on the HN front page, someone from Google shows up in the comments and takes some common-sense action. They are probably figuring out how to handle it now.

ImprovedSilence 14y ago

very slowly, but very, very surly, google is doing a complete 180 on "don't be evil". I think the slow pressure of being a public company is really going to strangle out much of the "good side" of Google. Everything they've done in the past 1.5yrs has been terrible for their users.

jonknee 14y ago
Since AdWords has been large (many years) there have been stories of unfair treatment. The same goes for AdSense. Google keeps its sauce secret which is extremely frustrating in these types of scenarios. It's sort of like Apple's App Approval process, very frustrating to be on the wrong side of. It's not crazy to believe that a store solely selling knives will receive more attention from the Knife Patrol in the AdWords Q&A department than stores that sell hundreds of different categories. These things can also take time, no one notices when Knife Depot stops advertising, but if an account rep loses a multi-million dollar account like Amazon there will be heads rolling. Knife Depot just got their notice last month, I'd wait a bit before calling foul.
- josefresco 14y ago
  Don't hold your breath for fair treatment. We thought this same thing (after some of our clients keywords were banned), and than day after day I monitored AdWords results to see if our competitors using the same tactics were removed and let's just say I got tired of checking.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
analog 14y ago
Hang on, what? Refusing to advertise knives which are clearly intended to be used as weapons is 'evil' now is it?
- Anechoic 14y ago
  You know we're talking about assisted-opening knives and not switchblades, right?

rdl 14y ago

I'm in favor of banning porn ads (generally), since those tend to be offensive to a lot of people and also are highly correlated with spammy behavior, but I'd be tempted to boycott a vendor who prohibited weapons ads for any reason other than legal compliance. Amazon is pretty reasonable (knives are fine, firearms accessories are fine, but firearms and ammunition are out due to compliance issues). Google has no excuse.

tjic 14y ago
> Amazon is pretty reasonable (knives are fine, firearms accessories are fine, but firearms and ammunition are out As a target shooter, I don't find this any more reasonable than a gay person might find "personal ads are fine, but not gay personal ads". All too often our definition of "reasonable" is "gores HIS ox but not mine".
- ori_b 14y ago
  You ignored the important part: "Due to compliance issues". I'm not familiar with the legal issues. However, it is perfectly reasonable for Amazon to comply with the law. Perhaps the laws are stupid, but that's not Amazon's fight.
  - wyager 14y ago
    The compliant issues you mention (for the most part) do not exist. There are very few extra legal limitations for selling ammunition over the internet. These legal limitations could be shifted to third-party retailers, with Amazon as a middleman only. There are literally no extra legal limitations or regulations for a company selling (non-firearm) firearm parts, which Amazon does not allow. Selling ammunition requires roughly the same amount of legal red tape as selling knives or tasers (which Amazon already does).
    - rdl 14y ago
      I didn't realize Amazon didn't allow non-firearm firearms parts, since I've bought ~10k in knoxx stocks, slings, sidesaddles, ammo holders, holsters, etc. through their marketplace. It's possible they just don't enforce it very well. Apparently their policy (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200277700 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...) allows a lot of things, but not other things, in a not entirely consistent way. Primers and brass are ok, but not bullets. Stocks are fine, but not barrels. wtf. There are some parts where Amazon would have liability. Magazines, for instance, especially since Amazon likes to be able to warehouse items wherever it finds most convenient. 30 round magazines would be really complex given that some states ban them.

josefresco 14y ago

Being an AdWords veteran (having managed campaigns for several clients) all I could do was nod my head grumble under my breath about how this is "business as usual" for Google. One of my clients who was selling in the health market had this and other seemingly "unfair" treatments happen again and again over the years. All the while Google was taking money from Canadian "pharmacies" and allowing big brand competitors to violate the same rules they were coming down on my clients for. The kick is that sometimes you just luck out. Your ads are reviewed by another (anonymous) staffer who doesn't interpret the rules in the same way. We found the best way to avoid issues like this was: never edit an existing approved ad. Seems silly but we cringed each time we had to edit or submit a new ad knowing that some random reviewer would roll the dice and deliver a verdict. Finally however Google banned most of our most effective keywords, while at the same time allowing our competitors (both larger and smaller) to continue on without interruption.

GFischer 14y ago
Google ads in the health sector is tough, we tried advertising a medication/pill management software (for keeping track of times, stock, etc. with a twist), and Google was extremely frustrating in randomly restricting our keywords, and we had to repeatedly assert that we were NOT advertising medications. They did not ban our account or anything, they were happy to take a few of our dollars :) (we didn't get to the MVP stage, just an embarassingly bad landing page), but traffic was a lot less than I expected (and I can't seem to tweak our ads to stay out of Indian pages, we wanted U.S. only). At least we only paid per clicks.
- josefresco 14y ago
  Yeah I lost count on how many times I had to tell Google my client was not a pharmacy and not offering any prescription medications (even though we were bidding on terms that related to that market segment). I understand (and can tolerate) false positives in regards to software but there was no excuse for the uneven application by human editors of the guidelines.
  - 14y ago

alekseyk 14y ago

Google is a two faced company who only cares about money. And unlike other companies, they only care about BIG business money not small business money. I know that all too well, they banned one of the web sites I owned for 'adult' content on first strike while competitors who had 10x the traffic (and 10x the reports of user uploaded adult content) remained in their network. I never spoke to a single person there, always a robot. That was back in 2003. Now my headphone jack failed on brand new Nexus 4 and I never heard back from Google at all. This will bite them in the ass sooner or later.

oijaf888 14y ago
NEXUS 4 POWER USER RIGHT HERE

brador 14y ago

Solution B: start second site with the questioned knives. Link from main site. Keep adwords pointing to main site. ?

xutopia 14y ago

Is it really illegal to own a switch blade but legal to purchase and own assault rifles?

mindcrime 14y ago
Knives, nunchucks, brass knuckles, etc. are usually covered by state level laws, from what I've seen, and the legality varies widely. Firearms are a slightly different story, since the 2nd Amendment very specifically protects firearms ownership. So yes, it is possible that somewhere or other, a switch blade knife is illegal while an "assault rifle" is legal. I saw "assault rifle" in quotes, because most people talking about these issues have no clue what an "assault rifle" really is, and are repeating garbage they heard from various anti-gun activist groups, who routinely use a totally bogus definition of "assault rifle" or "assault weapon". It's important to understand that owning a real assault rifle (that is, one capable of select-fire / bust-mode / fully automatic operation) IS legal but it's VERY highly regulated, VERY expensive, and you can only - as a civilian - purchase weapons manufactured before 1986.
- Anechoic 14y ago
  since the 2nd Amendment very specifically protects firearms ownership I've seen folks use that rationale, but the 2A doesn't say "firearms" it says "arms" - presumably "knives, nunchucks, brass knuckles, etc" would fall under that, although that's clearly not how it's been interpreted.
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    That's a fair point, but - for whatever reason - the way it's interpreted in practice seems to be mainly (if not exclusively) about firearms. Come to think of it, I don't know why that is, and I'm not arguing that it's correct. Anyway, the real point is that there seems to be a lot more variation in laws concerning the legality of owning knives, nunchucks, brass-knuckles, etc., than there is about guns. Guns may be more highly regulated in general, but I don't know of a single state where private ownership of, say, a pistol, is illegal. But I'm pretty sure there are states where switch-blade knives are. But I'm working off memory here, so maybe I'm wrong.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

You cannot wield the kind of economic power Google does and not be evil, at least for the working definition many people have of "evil". We've put a huge hunk of our intellectual and economic capital under the control of a marketing company. I really, really like Google, but I don't see this situation as being stable over a period of decades. Maybe 5-10 more years or so, but not a lot longer. These kinds of decisions, where we pick economic winners and losers, are political decisions, no matter who makes them. (Personally I abhor making them, but that doesn't change what they are). These knife guys have representatives. Indeed, every small business Google has run over has democratic representation. Each year Google continues to make these decisions the political hue and cry will increase. This can't go on forever like this. "Don't be evil" was a great slogan, but its days are numbered. Perhaps over. Side note: one of the ways I can tell Google's power has grown too large is the elliptical way many commenters have of criticizing it. They're unhappy with its actions, perhaps even livid, but it's always a tone of "Golly! This is really unfortunate and I'm sure nobody at Google really meant to do this, but...." This is the same way you'd criticize a king, somebody you are beholden to. "Golly! I know you, the king, are not at fault, but some of these advisers of yours must have accidentally goofed up somewhere..." Whereas if Dell, the electric company, or the garage down the street screws up in your eyes? Different tone entirely.

OGinparadise 14y ago
The worst part is that Google controls both the ads and search, and free clicks just happened to be under attack. Obviously Google wants you to advertise and search updates can do that. No one audits them at all despite them essentially controlling online commerce.
scarmig 14y ago
As they say, the Cossacks work for the Czar. They have always worked for the Czar. If a big institution screws you over but has found a clever way of perpetually evading or delegating away vocal blame for that... they're still responsible, unless they're fixing the system in the very-near term. If the resources aren't there to fix the system, that's because they've consciously chosen not to allocate those resources.

onemorepassword 14y ago

Oh, the irony of publicizing the same knives via YouTube, the Google property that censors boobies but allows you to promote machine guns to a global audience...

kyrra 14y ago
(At least in the US) weapons and violence are fine in video/audio format, while naked people are not. I'm not sure how much this has to do with Google than it does the regulations imposed by the FCC and social norms.
- viggity 14y ago
  the fcc has nothing to do with it. there are plenty of places on the internet that have pr0n (legally). it is more about american social norms.
wyager 14y ago
Why not both?

jordoh 14y ago

This seems like a pretty clear-cut case of assuming that there is some intentional malice or favoritism in actions that are the result of an automated system. - Google adds some terms like "assisted opening knife" and "assist folding knife" so they are recognized as prohibited knife ads. Adding these terms could very well have been automated based on the terms having a strong association with other terms found alongside prohibited items. - knife-depots' account suddenly contains X% disallowed knife ads, based on the new terms - where X is relatively large percentage. Account automatically disabled. - Amazon and Walmart also have X% disallowed knife ads, but X is an extremely small percent of their overall number of items. Accounts remain active. Fortunately, AdWords is one of the few Google properties where you can actually get a human on the phone and have them intervene with the automated results (though it can certainly take a lot of back and forth, in my personal experience). In a more general sense, this is something that you constantly run in to if you have your automated systems performing any action that a user could view as punitive. I've yet to see a site that was open about automated actions being such - likely because they don't want to make it too easy to automate getting around the automated rules - but it does seem like there is a reasonable amount of explanation of the system that could diffuse these assumptions of persecution.

ISL 14y ago
"- Amazon and Walmart also have X% disallowed knife ads, but X is an extremely small percent of their overall number of items. Accounts remain active." And the little guy, selling the same product in competition with the big guy, gets killed. It's often better to have a level playing field.
- jordoh 14y ago
  How do you level the playing field in this case? One account has 50% disallowed items (50 of 100) and another account has 0.005% disallowed items (50 of 1,000,000). You could bias _against_ large accounts by banning when they reach a fixed number of disallowed items - but then you let little guys (or any big guy that makes lots of small accounts) skate by under some arbitrary limit.

pud 14y ago

Whenever I ban a user from one of my sites for an infraction, he invariably points to several other infracting users and says "well why do they get to post porn (or ads for weapons or whatever) and I don't?" The reason is because I didn't catch the other users. Or their infraction isn't as bad. While I feel bad for the knife company, I also know dealing with user-generated content (like these ads) is hard.

ScottWhigham 14y ago
I think so much of these types of actions stem from growing pains. It all stars with defining a policy (no assisted open knife ads!). You then have managers telling their employees to enforce it, but the TOS hasn't been updated and the front-line employees do not have the tools to really identify who is actively infringing. Once the front-line employees come back with dozens of complaints (or users complain), the management realizes the mistakes and things get righted. I'm sure it's no different for you - once you create the policy, you experience the problems implementing the policy that then force/cause you to create the tools/etc.
kybernetyk 14y ago
> dealing with user-generated content (like these ads) is hard. That's not really an excuse because no one forces Google to be in the user generated ad business. They want money from advertisers so they should do all they can to offer the best service possible.
- kkowalczyk 14y ago
  If the advertiser is not happy with Google's service, they are free to use another service. "no one forces you to do X" argument cuts both ways?
  - cooldeal 14y ago
    Google has such a large percentage of search traffic that your competitors who are not flagged will have a huge advantage over you.
  - 14y ago

davebees 14y ago

> We’d also been careful to not ever violate Google’s Adwords weapons policy, which prohibits “the promotion of knives, such as butterfly knives, (balisongs) and switchblades.” Sounds like they were promoting knives, and hence violating the policy.

smusumeche 14y ago
I'm not the OP, but I do work for Knife Depot. We have advertised with Google for over 8 years and they ONLY prohibit butterfly, balisong, and switchblade/automatic knives. We are within their guidelines.

yalogin 14y ago

I just realized that Adwords is Google's equivalent of the iOS app store. They review stuff and either remove or block certain "items". I cannot help but wonder how civil and accomodating the people effected by the adwords changes are compared to the developers effected by the iOS app store. Is it just because the developers know how to make noise better than the non-tech ones?

radtad 14y ago

Search 'assisted opening knives' and you won't see any ads about such knives EXCEPT for Amazon. You will also see "Shop for Assisted Opening Knives on Google" which, if you follow the link, will show you a nice assortment of about 14k assisted opening knives. This feels like an abuse of monopoly power.

radtad 14y ago
wow, now ALL of the ads are gone, which to me has the effect of making the google shopping banner EVEN MORE noticeable.
hamax 14y ago
I'm seeing adds for cabelas.com but not for amazon.

ritonlajoie 14y ago

The real issue with these blogs is that there is no way to get to the main website easily.

samd 14y ago

What's really important is this line: "For that reason, we wanted to let you guys, loyal Cutting Edge readers and Knife Depot fans, know that you might not being seeing Knife Depot ads peppered across the Internet." If you don't get to advertise with Google you basically don't get to advertise on the Internet. That's a powerful monopoly, one they've had for years, and that's the real story here. You have to deal with Google and all their idiosyncratic/evil/whatever behavior because there's no alternative.

dhimes 14y ago
Indeed- and now they are building internet infrastructure, cars, and eyeware.
smusumeche 14y ago
Bingo.
gwern 14y ago
People were criticizing the infrastructure analogy made for Google Reader recently; so you can imagine how amused I was, while reading Levy's _In The Plex_, to read this bit: > While some Googlers felt singled out unfairly for the attention, the more measured among them understood it as a natural consequence of Google’s increasing power, especially in regard to distributing and storing massive amounts of information. “It’s as if Google took over the water supply for the entire United States,” says Mike Jones, who handled some of Google’s policy issues. “It’s only fair that society slaps us around a little bit to make sure we’re doing the right thing.” (In a part generally about advertising, fittingly enough.)

DividesByZero 14y ago

In the example video both knives seem like they do pretty much exactly the same thing?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

torya 14y ago

of all people google is too cheap to have a real live person on the phone doing customer service and because of that you have to email them and wait. you would think a multibillion dollar company can afford to hire some callers, but no, they are too stingy. it is a good strategy if you own google stock though, don't ever expect any service from google though.

corresation 14y ago

http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/176077?hl=en http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/176077?hl=en Company tried to sell a product that Google prohibits. Where is the story here? Trying to say "well they do it too!" is not and is never a valid complaint, just as it wasn't in primary school -- their day will come. Further the desperate reaching to make Google evil is a stretch given that doing this can only possibly lose them money (favoring the "big guys" isn't rational for a bid-based service, where the highest bid gets Google the most money, regardless of the vendor). The only real story here is that Google managed to achieve such dominance in advertising (though it certainly isn't as absolute as some are pretending).

caf 14y ago
The "big guys" sell a lot more products in a lot more categories, so are presumably putting in a much larer number of bids - it is not hard to believe that Google sees a lot more revenue from Amazon than some random knife shop.
- corresation 14y ago
  I'm entirely sure that Amazon spends more. But for that keyword whoever bids the most spends the most. Google optimizes by the keyword, which of course they should, just as companies like Amazon don't bid on keywords because they're benevolent, but because they want to optimize their own return. Removing players from the market cannot possibly serve Google's financial interest, and that conspiratorial angle makes absolutely no sense. Because their seems to be some confusion about how bid systems work (including by the dead post below), if Amazon and others outbid this company, netting more for Google, this would be a non-issue because you would have never seen this company's products. It is notable that Google absolutely bans knives in the context of weapons, full stop (the author of the linked posting seems confused and thinks "such as" gives the specific culprits, when those are merely examples). This company may have authored their ads in a weapons manner, or targeted weapons-type keywords -- the sort of nonsense that gets Google sued by a bunch of state Attorneys down the road, everyone clucking about how evil Google is selling (indirectly) the knife that the kid used to do some evil. EDIT: The only possible favoritism that Google might be showing her is in the context of legal responsibility. If some random knife site sells a kid a knife via a Adwords ad, everyone will come gunning for Google. If Walmart sells a knife to some kid, everyone will go gunning for Walmart, regardless of how they got the initial contact.

score 14y ago

It's easy to see why Google banned these guys and not Amazon.com or Walmart. I could sum it up in one word: trust. Amazon and Walmart have it, these guys don't. Personally, if I'm going to buy a knife, I'll buy it from Amazon. I trust them on a whole bunch of levels that I don't trust these guys. Is it fair? I've been doing SEO / PPC for over a decade and its never, ever been fair.

deleted 14y ago

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robomartin 14y ago

In the context of their world-wide monopoly, at one point we have to start asking if Google has the right to censor or control anything this way. Don't get me wrong, I hate the idea of government telling anyone what they can and cannot do. Massive monopolies is one place where I can see a need for some kind of legal intervention. The reason obviously being that a large monopoly has no competing entity to force it to modify its behavior. While it is true that Google tries to "clean-up" their search I think this is almost an arrogant stance. How can a few hundred people be in charge of deciding what you and I should and should not see? Methinks we should be given control. If I don't like weapons of any kind I ought to be able to go to my control panel and exclude them from my results. It should be my choice, not theirs. That said, these "assisted opening" blades are an obvious example of exploiting a loophole in the laws. For all intents and purposes they are switch blades. The end result is exactly the same: Open a knife very quickly. Then there's the whole argument about how much sense it makes to granularly ban stuff like this. I have no clue as to how much crime out there can be attributed directly to switch blades. Probably not much at all. Although I do remember that knives are on par with certain types of guns in terms of murders per year. Circling back, the "Google Syndrome" is one that is constantly growing in threat level. I've said this many time. I like their services, but this business of killing your account auto-magically with no real business process in place to deal with the problems is just total bullshit. At one point it has to stop. I have no clue what's going to make that happen, but it sure seems to be leaving a path of destruction behind it. The best thing we can do is stop using every new Google service they throw at us. I know, it's hard to let go of the free drugs, but look at what you are promoting and decide if this is what you want in the future five times over.

jroseattle 14y ago

As more of these stories happen, Google adwords will simply consist of the big-brand marketers. There is something I trust in this process -- the market. Companies like knife-depot are specialty, niche, hyper-focused on their particular product: knives. From their post, it's obvious they know those products inside and out. WalMart, Target, Amazon? They don't know squat about those products. If I want a specialty product such as the knife described in the article, I trust a specialty shop much more than the bulk-focused vendors. As Google runs more of the specialty folks away and caters more to the big brands, I would venture they'll see click-through activity commensurate with that change. And that's called opportunity in that space. Nice going, Google.

conductr 14y ago

Google's not the only one who bans you. I'm at work: "This Websense category is filtered: Weapons." Yes, I work for a big company that filters the web and it does suck for me... but since a lot of people shop online while at work, it also sucks for you

danhodgins 14y ago

If I was Knife Depot, I would focus on brainstorming a single opt-in offer they could use to have all their marketing and advertising channels function as a funnel for growing their email list. "1 Badass Knife Per Week" is an opt-in offer that would get my attention, even though I'm not a knife guy. I expand on this idea in this post: http://www.tinylever.com/one-badass-knife-per-week http://www.tinylever.com/one-badass-knife-per-week Why be dependent on Google for your sales? Pay them once up front to help grow your list, and you'll be able monetize each subscriber for their lifetime using email - a FREE channel you own and control 100%. A list is really where it's at, but to make list-building work you need a single opt-in offer that will cause people to sign up on the spot. If you'd like some ideas for crafting your opt in offer, reach out right now by email: dan [at] tinylever [dot] com

anigbrowl 14y ago

I watched his video that purported to explain the difference between a switchblade and a spring assisted knife. As far as I can tell the only difference is that the location of the switch has changed. This is a distinction without a substantive difference. So yo would need a slightly different hand movement to trigger this alternative spring-assisted knife. Big deal; as someone who used to like knives enough to have a small collection, I think I could get the necessary movement down in 10 or 15 minutes if someone handed me one of these I have nothing against this guy promoting his business, but this is a switchblade as far as I'm concerned, just a slightly different design.

mtraven 14y ago
According to their site the assisted-opening knives are legal in all states, whereas switchblades aren't, so there must be some meaningful distinction (unless the law just hasn't caught up yet).
- badgar 14y ago
  The "meaningful distinction" is that "assisted-opening" knives require a non-zero amount of force in the direction that the knife actually opens. Switchblades can just have a button. The former takes a few minutes of practice to open smoothly, the latter doesn't. There's no reason to buy an assisted-opening knife if switchblades are also available. So yes, they absolutely exist to exploit a loophole. Loopholes in laws do tend to create (often short-lived) markets.
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    The former takes a few minutes of practice to open smoothly, the latter doesn't. Having once owned a switchblade, it takes a bit of practice to hold it such a way that you can operate it but not block the path of the outswinging blade with your fingers. Watching the demonstration in this video, there doesn't seem to be any more force employed in operating the switch that there was in pressing the button. I agree that this is probably a short-lived thing that will fade away following a minor regulatory clarification.

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ams6110 14y ago

Comcast is doing something similar, they have banned advertising from legitimate, legal gun shops, but of course continue to carry copious amounts of programming featuring glorified, gratuitous gun violence. I want to cancel my Comcast account; they used to be my only option but very recently AT&T is now offering their "U-verse" internet in my neighborhood.

pja 14y ago

I suspect the short question + answer is: are you buying Amazon or Walmart levels of AdWords? No? Well, congratulations, you're SOL. It's no wonder that Google has started pouring large amounts of effort into lobbying in the last few years, because it's precisely this combination of de facto monopoly combined with poor treatment of customers who have no-where else to go that leads (eventually) to legislation or possibly even break-up of the company in question. To paraphrase a famous quote: you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you, whether you like it or not.

JumpCrisscross 14y ago

There may be merit in splitting Google's Search and Advertising businesses. Advertising would pay Search (or Bing or Duck Duck Go) to place ads in its results via an API. Search would indiscriminately host ads posted to it by ad brokers, of which Advertising would be one. Search would be freed from having to police advertisements. Advertising's policing would be checked by competitive pressure. In a stylised securities transaction we have customers, brokers, and an exchange. Customers have choices between brokers. Brokers, of which there are many, exercise discretion in how much capability they give which customers. The exchange, of which there is one, exercises discretion in which brokers it transacts with, but not which customers get to transact on it. This is important since the exchange has something approaching monopoly power. It also means the exchanges aren't liable for non-compliant customers - the brokers are. Skip back to Google. Search is the exchange and Advertising is the broker. The exchange only permits one broker. Naturally, the broker-exchange is liable for policing non-compliant and stupid customers (barring a very large expansion in government which would permit it to monitor all transactions going through Google). It has also extended its exchange monopoly power to its broker. We love disintermediation. But intermediaries facilitate checks on concentration in a competitive system.

mgkimsal 14y ago

I can imagine one of the justifications for letting walmart and others get away with it is because they're big, but more specifically, their ad budgets are big. But... so what? Where else are they going to go? Bing? Mapquest? Perhaps if every major large retailer in the US shaved off a few percent of their ad budget away from Google and gave it to one competitor, there'd be a slim fighting chance of actually upsetting Google's dominance, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case. Relatedly(?), MS has avoided hardware for a long time... ostensibly under the guise of "not upsetting their partners". But... what would the partners do? Bundle Linux? In mobile, they're sort of doing this, but hardware partners left MS not because MS was competing in the hardware business against them - they left because the option (android) was better.

aymeric 14y ago

I got into the same situation with my outsourcing company http://taskarmy.com http://taskarmy.com They suspended our account although we made the changes necessary to comply with their terms of service (you can't guarantee 1st page in SEO services). In the meantime, some of our competitors can still advertise their services. Since my account has been suspended, it massively slowed down the growth and I couldn't a better replacement.

tehwalrus 14y ago

(from UK, and happy to accept your downvotes): I'm shocked that people litteraly sell knives designed to hurt people on the internet, and that people on HN come to the defence of these arms dealers. I assumed this was about kitchen knives when I clicked on the link. The US constitution was written with a right to bear arms so people could overthrow the government, not protect themselves from criminals. Since then, that government has entrenched power to the point where it would be nearly impossible for even another state to take it down, let alone a group of armed civilians - thus rendering the constitutional clauses irrelevant to their original purpose. (note to secret services: no, I don't want to overthrow governments or start wars, I'm talking hypothetically.) In the rest of the developed world where weapons are generally banned, as they are in the UK, criminals simply don't use weapons on civilians (apart from high value targets, perhaps) because the penalties for doing so are so harsh. Criminals literally throw their guns away in a chase, rather than use them on the police/get caught with them. Police are generally unarmed, apart from specially trained units (dawn raids, at airports, etc). This is the sole reason I would never ever consider living in the USA - the risk from a) criminals, b) civilian "heros" and c) the police themselves, all of whom are armed to the teeth, legally. Terrifying.

score 14y ago
Welcome to the US, where the rights of the individual override the rights and safety of the whole. Here in the US, tolerance to do and say "whatever the hell I want" is demanded but rarely returned.
jlgreco 14y ago
The only difference between my assisted opening knife and my paring knife is that the former is safe to put into my pocket. Same size, same blade shape, one lives in my kitchen cabinet and the other lives in my toolbag. I don't use the later for food because I don't want it to get sticky. How exactly does that make the later "designed to hurt people"?
- Nitramp 14y ago
  the former is safe to put into my pocket The spring is the difference. A switchblade (and "assisted opening" is just an obvious circumvention of those being banned) can be easily carried concealed and is a very deadly weapon in fights. That's why they are outlawed - legislation has decided that their potential utility (takes a second less to open?) doesn't outweigh their general danger to the public. Note that all kinds of easy to carry knifes are not illegal, like hunting knifes or swiss army knifes.

cm2012 14y ago

Does anybody else notice that they now OWN Assisted Opening Knives in the organic SERPS? Making Google ads, while useful, not as vital.

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capo 14y ago

Why is this sort of post even on HN, not to mention the front page? and why is this thread dominated by idiotic language about "evil" and "kings" and incoherent babbling about politics and democratic representation?! and suddenly everyone is a law scholar. I blame Matt Cutts' occasional appearances for the subsequent flocking of SEO sorts here. This post doesn't belong on HN, certainly not on the front page.

reader5000 14y ago
The top comment is the most batshit comment I have ever read on HN. Interesting crowd shift going on.
throwaway420 14y ago
> I blame Matt Cutts' occasional appearances for the subsequent flocking of SEO sorts here. This post doesn't belong on HN, certainly not on the front page. Your anger is misplaced. The blame is solely on Google for not having an adequate customer service department. When Google has arbitrary decided that your business is in violation of some of its rules, you end up falling into a Kafkaesque nightmare of form responses and then you stop getting even those. The only way to get a response from Google in these cases is to LITERALLY get a popular post on Reddit or Hacker News. That's why small businesses post about this stuff here. Don't blame them. Blame Google for not providing a decent customer service center because they want to shave a tiny bit of expenses.
- janesvilleseo 14y ago
  I partly agree about the customer service issue. However, they have really been stepping up as of late (if you are an AdWords customer that is). However the striking thing for me is the "voiced" doublestandard. Cutts is pretty consistent on the Organic side of things, but I don't think I have seen the same from their AdWords department. Which is a shame as it does need to be policed.
- capo 14y ago
  So HN has to be the consumer service?! that's not what this place is about.

tn13 14y ago

There is one more point we all might be missing here. This is not just about knief-depot. It is unreasonable to believe that someone at Google said, "Hey, I dont like these knief-depot people, let us screw them to benefit Amazon". Likely case is this. People at Amazon (or put other large company spending significant amounts with Google) maintains a dashboard and does a competitor analysis to find out that knief-depot is doing better than them and hence there is scope for screwing this smaller company. They talk to google and create problems from them. And I dont think they have singled out knife depot alone, but they have done this with many more on the slippary slope. This means that Google does have some non-transparent ways of doing business when with comes to Adwords. This is not just bad for Knife-depot but bad for all of us.

arbuge 14y ago

Google suspends AdWords acconts without much recourse all the time, as a quick search on "adwords account suspended" shows. Doesn't matter if they're paying customers, etc. The thorny part about it is that the guidelines that can lead to suspension change over time and deleting ads that are no longer in compliance might not safeguard your account. I've known account holders that got suspended retroactively for ads that are no longer in compliance, even though these ads were actually deleted before the guidelines changed. The point seems to be non-negotiable with Google though. This can be pretty tragic for many small businesses since Google accounts for such a huge percentage of search traffic. Larger customers typically have dedicated account reps who I'm guessing might be able to help in these situations.

jccalhoun 14y ago

"After some deep thinking, we decided that serving our customer base, who legally buy large amounts of assisted-opening knives, was more important than continuing to advertise with Google. For this reason, we decided to not remove the knives and forgo our Google Adwords account" I'm not clear. Did Knife Depot remove their ads or did Google?

akproxy 14y ago

Waahaa!!! The beauty of Hacker News! It started at Google Adwords and is now going to Communist China and Stalinist Russia!! Just have a look at the comment threads. Not bad!

TomGullen 14y ago

Here's one possible explanation. Amazon is a high value customer so Google carefully reviewed their t&c to ensure their selling policies are in line with googles own policies. They confidently know that amazon won't sell anything illegal, and that amazon have measures in place to deal with rogue sellers on their service. They know amazon has been around for a long time and are trusted by google and the general public. They know that if amazon screws up, amazon would probably take most of the heat. With this information google considers amazon to be a low risk user of their services. Knife depot is a small customer, and google cant justify the time to review your policies and risk that accepting you as a customer entails. If you screw up, google would probably take a large part of the blame. The popular alternative hypothesis seem to be that google is pure evil.

senegoid 14y ago
This is a fair comment. A company of Google's scale simply cannot monitor every Adwords account for compliance, so they are being safe. It doesn't mean this advertiser isn't untrustworthy or loose, just that Google cannot effectively monitor advertisers of this size. I also can't understand the mantra of 'don't be evil' still gets mentioned. This is nothing more than cute brand association with no real grounding in truth. Google are a public company who can be evil. It is like the platitude that Google shuns product managers and welcomes engineers, implying that Google products sell themselves because of rock-solid engineering (totally disregarding the fact that Google have an aggressive sales force and have spent billions on marketing activities, both directly and indirectly).

raheemm 14y ago

Seriously, there is a need for a startup to disrupt the hell out of google.

Stevenuteral 14y ago

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mannu4u4u 14y ago
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sroerick 14y ago

This is great PR.

notdan 14y ago

Ironically I can't view this "because it has been categorized "Weapons;Shopping"" by the corporate firewall...

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