I just saw this Google AdSense ad run on my quote post from Stephen J. Gould:

Google’s New Blog-This
Try the Google Toolbar Today - Update Your Blog Instantly - Free!

This links directory to the Google Toolbar. And, I have a few problems with this:

1. Is Google pushing its own products with its own advertising network? I won’t go as far as to call this duplicitous behavior, but it strays close to the other side of the “Do no evil” policy they hold dear. Running ads for your other services on a network you control is a conflict of interest that could be unfair to their content distributors as well as other advertisers.
2. Does Google pay itself for these ads?
3. How are they prioritized against normal ads?
4. Are they shown unilaterally on all AdSense properties?
5. The Google toolbar has nothing to do with blogging. Therefore it represents an unfair advertisement.
6. The link text, since it’s an affiliate of the advertising service, should specify [aff].
7. If I am blogging about MSN search and personally hate Google Search, but run AdSense, Google should not be showing its advertisement on my page

These are just random thoughts that come to mind about this odd Google AdSense ad. It’s possible that it’s not even sponsered by Google, but by a third party who felt like promoting the Google Toolbar. At first I thought I’d be redirected somewhere odd, but nope. It goes to toolbar.google.com. What do you think?

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  Julien McArdle 4 years ago 1 point

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  I don't believe this is done on purpose. Adsense is the key. It crawls, finds the words "blog" (which regardless of where you are on the web is a pretty key word to indicate the topic at hand), and that's all it needs. I do not believe its because of ill-doing on Google's part but rather simple coincidence... after all, they are only one of the select few blog entities out there that make enough dough to cover the cost of advertising.
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  http://jmcardle.com /people/2fbbd925be6690f9f9d58ab698ba1b2d/

 

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