That'd be a more direct relationship, but again Google didn't approach the
blogger about it, the blogger signed up for it. Google doesn't have any contact
with the blogger (other than to send them their checks), doesn't make payment
contingent on the site taking any particular position on anything (you can bash
or praise Google all day, and as long as you don't put up anything that'd
violate AdSense's TOS it won't affect what you get paid either way), and mostly
doesn't even pay attention to what's on sites unless/until they get a complaint
or one of their automated checks flags the site for terms-of-service
issues.
It's akin to a newspaper saying "We check and handle direct
buying of political ads. But, a lot of people buy regular non-political
advertising in our paper, and some of them almost certainly also say things on
their own about political candidates that could fall under the heading of
political advertising. We don't pay attention to them because we don't care
about it as long as they pay for their advertising space, and we don't charge
any different rates based on what they say elsewhere. And frankly it's going to
be a huge job to start keeping track of everything everyone who buys advertising
space with us says in every other venue. So should we begin keeping track and
reporting their advertising purchases as potential political spending based on
the candidates/issues they support and oppose, or are the two simply not related
absent some indication we're basing our decisions about who to sell space to and
what rates to charge on those positions?" [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|