The “Don’t be Evil” company coughs up a fur ball

Note: This column documents a long ago experience when as a Web proprietor I interacted with the Google dynasty and its—let’s just say—”bizarre and/or arbitrarily applied” policy regarding the small fries it would do business with. Google, two weeks previous to this column, precipitously and inscrutably canceled my Google CPC[1] advertising account; there was no telling whether Google would further downgrade its valuation of my site, e.g. lowering the Coffee Coaster’s page rank—regardless of what I did or didn’t  do. So in the immortal words of Vince Majestyk, “There’s no sense getting on their good side.” I wrote this column as a warning to others at the time. And I resurrect it now, three and a half years later mostly for historical reference. Since Google has become the antithesis now of a company that doesn’t do evil.  — Brian Wright Continue reading →