Insightfull short blog post on why google's answer about how they use their own ad system to place ads is misleading..
ps. the roughtype blog, written by nicholas carr, is consistently good.
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How many times have you searched for something on Google and found, in the shaded "Sponsored Link" box at the top of the list of results, an ad for a product offered by ... Google?
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A couple of days ago, Isaac Garcia, the CEO of CentralDesktop, a maker of online collaboration tools for businesses and an AdWords customer, wrote an angry post about Google's advertising practices.
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Garcia's conclusion: "Google cheats." He says, "What this tells me is if you are trying to advertise a product that is competitive to Google, then you'll never be able to receive the Top Ad Position, no matter how much money you bid and spend."
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But Garcia's charge, and the subsequent discussion of it in the blogosphere, got under Google's skin, and, yesterday, the company responded.. "Our ads are created and managed under the exact same guidelines, principles, practices and algorithms as the ads of any other advertiser. "
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I'm sure that's all true, but it's also disingenuous. Even though Garcia overstated his case, he's right to be concerned. There's something fishy here. Whether Google bids "fairly" or "unfairly" in these auctions, the fact is that it's playing with the house's money. Whether it bids a buck or a hundred bucks on a keyword doesn't make much difference to it, because the cash is just going from its back pocket to its front pocket. And if the auctioneer can bid as much as he wants without actually incurring any cost, that has to distort the prices being paid by all the other bidders, who are paying real money.
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ps. the roughtype blog, written by nicholas carr, is consistently good.
