Google accused of papering over ads
GOOGLE has been accused of stifling free speech after it banned an ad attacking a paper manufacturer over its environmental record.
The Wilderness Society paid to have its ad on Google promoting a boycott against a paper manufacturer that uses wood sourced from Australian old-growth forests.
When web users typed into Google the words ”office paper”, ”office stationery” or the brand names Australian Paper and Reflex, a link to the Wilderness Society’s website, Ethical Paper, would appear at the top of the search engine’s listings.
But after the company at the centre of the boycott, Australian Paper, complained, Google removed the ads, saying that because the society did not own the trademark for the popular paper brand Reflex, it could not use the name in its ads. Google says it introduced the policy in 2002 to protect the intellectual copyright of advertisers.
But the Wilderness Society’s Sydney campaigner, Peter Cooper, said Google’s policy did not apply as his organisation was not trying to sell anything but rather to bring an issue to the public’s attention.
”The internet is a very important place for debate in our society and an issue as important as this needs to be discussed in a public forum and a policy such as this prevents that,” he said.
The society’s Google ads have since been replaced by one for an Australian Paper website defending its environmental policies. Turning the table on the society, the paper manufacturer has bought the search terms ”ethical paper” in order to generate traffic to its site rather than to the society’s. However, by yesterday afternoon, the ads had disappeared from Google.
Freedom of speech campaigners said Google was using its muscle – more than 90 per cent of online searches in Australia are on Google – to prevent a balanced debate.
Google said it encouraged disputing parties to settle differences between themselves.
Originally Published at http://www.theage.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/google-accused-of-papering-over-ads-20110131-1ab6w.html