“One simple rule for whitening teeth.”
Yeah, brush your teeth.

“One simple rule to lose weight.”
Yeah, don’t eat so much.

But Google is going to have to be be careful to avoid gathering up too many advertisers in the ban, lest it create a market for Yahoo and Microsoft/Bing as a search engine.

Another big risk to Google is the risk of additional political pressure from the left and right (and weird) to ban politically sensitive advertisements and advertisers too. This could spiral out of control.

On the other hand: It is kind of scary, but what is to stop Google from doing this to anyone that displeases them. They can almost single handily destroy a business with the flick of a switch. “Be a real shame if something were to happen to those ads of yours…”

Food for thought.

What’s really interesting is that the old media banned fringe politics and anything that would upset the masses. But that’s not really an issue for the web. Just so it isn’t a scam or purposely offensive it’s not an issue because people on the web are used to different opinions, attitudes and vulgarities.

The scammers don’t care about repeat business.

Hopefully Google has the ability to distinguish between a gangbanger’s activity and Banksy’s art. I am not sure how much art is being created via adwords but wouldn’t want to see it go in the interest of pragmatism.

I agree, it’s a slippery slope for Google to judge what’s a scam and what’s the real deal — after all, who are we to say that it’s all just quackery?

Still, I can’t stand those ads, and the pictures are clearly misleading. I’ll be quite happy to see them go.

I think it’s important to note, the article implies Google was already removing the ads, but the advertiser was just submitting new ones. Google’s policy change means they can now choose the ban the advertiser entirely, which makes much more sense. They’ve been judging ad quality all along, they are just finally enforcing it in a way that will actually have an effect on the guilty.

Given that I regularly hide ads anyway (because, frankly, I detest advertising of all forms), I’m more than happy to let Google ban as many advertisers as it sees fit. In fact, I’d prefer if they banned all advertisers for abuse.

If I want a product, I’ll go looking for it. I don’t need big, flashy, screen real estate-stealing ads telling me what I should be buying. Relegate the ads to marketplaces (where I might actually be interested) and get them off of my blogs.

Although I was pleased to read in the article that Google has set up a review procedure for anyone who feels they have been unfairly banned.

I think that’s a little short sighted. Google is the market leader for a reason: they offer relevant search information for their users. Simply put, this is an extension of that mission. Adwords are not excluded, since scammy adwords lead to a bad user experience.

That’s like saying that none of the regular-sized apes followed King Kong up the Empire State Building. All others are a pretty distant 2nd to Google.