“Don’t do…”
May 21st, 2010 by fbermejo
Google has become such a huge and hyperactive company that it is often difficult to keep up with all its initiatives, and even its conflicts. Among the latter, the one that has been drawing most attention recently has been its problems in Europe regarding the collection of data on private wireless networks by its Street View cars. But I have been following another conflict that, even though it is not getting much publicity, I find to be quite interesting.
In late April, a coalition of abortion clinics in Spain requested Google to lift its ban on abortion service ads in Adwords Spain. In 2008, Google updated its advertising policies to forbid abortion clinics ads in 15 countries—Germany, Poland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, France, Italy and Spain. [You can read here an interesting exchange of emails between Planned Parenthood Oklahoma and a Google representative regarding this decision] The recent petition in Spain was triggered by the upcoming legislative change that will lift some restrictions on abortion practices in the country–abortion was until now legal, but subject to wider restrictions. What ensued was an exchange—both in private and through the media—between Google and the petitioners, with Google showing its willingness to discuss the issue and review its norms if necessary, and the clinics engaging the Government in their support and threatening with legal action.
This whole exchange lead me to Adwords’ policy page, in which Google lists the types of ads that are not allowed, and specifies the country variations to the general policy. To my surprise, I could not find any reference to abortion clinics in it. And I wonder why. Looking at all these forbidden topics and their local variations also made me wonder how exactly these decisions are made inside Google. Who decides what is acceptable advertising, and on what grounds? Regardless of the answer, the page is a great reading to understand the local contours of Google’s version of “…evil”.
2 Responses to ““Don’t do…””
Interesting. I suppose that because Berkman receives funding from Google, you can’t simply call them out on their blatant. censorship.
Thanks for your comment, Brett. When Google started using advertising as a source of revenue they decided to establish a distinction between organic and paid search results. In many ways, this distinction parallels the traditional separation in news media between editorial and advertising (both in terms of content and in terms of departments). At the same time, the idea of censorship has been changing rapidly in recent years. And while I would agree in calling censorship the filtering out of information in the editorial or organic results side, I am not convinced we should use the same term to refer to the rejection of certain types of advertising. There are different reasons for rejecting advertising—some are legal, some are moral/ethical, and some simply strategic. And while I may not—and do not—agree with some of these rejections, I still feel that Google has the right to decide which types of activities they are going to profit from. And I don’t feel comfortable describing this as censorship. I find the issue fascinating nonetheless, and that is why I wrote about it.
As for your attribution of my description of this issue to Google’s funding of the Berkman Center, let me say that that is quite a stretch. In fact, Google is one among a large and diverse list of funders of the Berkman Center (you can find the complete list here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/about/support). Even if it were a large and essential funder, my experience since I joined the Center as a fellow is that the wall between editorial and advertising (that is, research/publication and funding) at Berkman is as high and thick as it can possibly be. Finally, this is but a personal blog, in which I express my own views, and I can assure you nothing is further from my mind when I write a post than the list of Berkman funders. Of course, you can ignore all this and stick to your attribution, but that would remind me of that New Yorker cartoon in which a wife tells her husband “You look sorry, you act sorry, you say you’re sorry… but you are not sorry!”