Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Thanksgiving competition!

Following on from the post below, I was looking up some details on the 2012 Convention on Biodiversity held in Hyderabad last month. I wanted to see what the media said about the outcomes and so I did a Google News search on the rather specific 'convention on biodiversity 2012 hyderabad'. I was a little surprised to see the first link was to Chevron.com. Then I noticed it was, of course, an ad.  You get the same result if you just do a Google web search on 'Biodiversity'.

The ad is there because Chevron pay money for it to come up every time someone Google's Biodiversity. Try it. It might not work every time, because of the way adwords works, but I had 100% success. It links to corporate fluff of course. Strangely it doesn't mention Chevron's recent adventures in Ecuadorean Law so I thought I would
In 2011, a court in Ecuador fined Chevron $8.6 billion over pollution to the country's Amazon region. The action was brought against Chevron by 30,000 Ecuadorean people, and is the first time that indigenous people have successfully sued a multinational corporation in the country where the pollution took place. Chevron described the lawsuit as an "extortion scheme" and refused to pay the fine. Chevron has no international obligation to pay, and no assets in Ecuador for the government to seize.
Google Adwords brought in $28 BILLION in 2010. Wow. Hey Google, how about paying Chevron's fine since they won't?

So, my Thanksgiving challenge to you, is can you find a more inappropriate and just plain annoying adwords placement than this for a conservation or environmentally relevant Google search?

I remember the good old days when virtually any search would provoke an ebay ad offering a used version of whatever you were searching for. It used to amuse me no end when searching for images and information when I was putting together my disease class:
'Buy used corpses on ebay'
'Buy used mad cows on ebay'
etc



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