BW Online | March 9, 2004 | Google's Ads -- and Minuses

BW Online | March 9, 2004 | Google's Ads -- and Minuses: "commerce and conflict sit poorly on the same Web page. Likewise, control and transparency often exist as opposing forces. How Google, the world's No. 1 search engine, balances these tensions could change the shape of the Internet.

'Google can make choices about what people see and what they don't see, and how it's ordered,' says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. 'As more and more people use Google to access the Internet, that definitely raises some important policy questions.'"

Google has also been selling contextual advertising that associates specific ads with content, regardless of whether a keyword has been purchased. For example, in Google's AdSense program, an article about the Copacabana nightclub might draw ads from Brazilian resorts -- even if none of them had purchased the keyword Copacabana. This means that Google could be exercising editorial policy on third-party sites that are unaware Google is making these choices for them