
Google to deliver wrong search results to would-be jihadis - eplanit
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/12136765/Google-to-deliver-wrong-search-results-to-would-be-jihadis.html
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dragonwriter
The last two paragraphs explicitly indicates that the headline (and much of
the earlier part of the article) is misleading in its references to "wrong" or
"opposite" search results:

 _A Google spokeswoman said the pilot project referred to by Dr House would
bring up counter-narrative messages in "AdWords" \- the sponsored links which
are returned at the top of a Google search - and not the search results
themselves._

 _Dr House said later: "We offer Google AdWords Grants to NGOs so that
meaningful counter-speech ads can be surfaced in response to search queries
like 'join Isis'."_

~~~
ChuckMcM
And in some ways that is sort of worse. Does that mean that Jihadists are
buying AdWords? Is Google trying to set an auction floor on the price of those
keywords by offering grants which, they watch to see how high they can push up
the ISIS bid price? How is this not like letting a shill at an auction bid up
the price with the company's money? So the NGO wins? Fine they feel good about
putting an opposing message in the ad slots, the Jihadists win the bid? Hey
double win for Google, they get more Ad money and they didn't have to give any
to the NGO to buy that Ad.

What's next, giving Grants to people who want to buy Anti-vaccine creatives
next to searches of "measles" or "rubella" or "polio" ?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Does that mean that Jihadists are buying AdWords?

No, it doesn't mean that. And if Google knew they were and were accepting
money from them for that purpose of buying AdWords for recruitment, there'd be
all kinds of legal liability.

~~~
ChuckMcM
There are two ways they could implement this, and one would be to whitelist[0]
who could buy Ads on those keywords. The other is they could make them
ineligible for AdWord buys and supply their own selected ads when the words
were used. But that would mean they wouldn't need to give out grants since
those Ads would be "free" to the NGOs.

They (Google) haven't historically been good at keeping bad actors out of
AdWords (see the FTC penalty for showing Canadian Pharmacy ads[1]) but I could
believe that things have improved since then.

The challenge is how it was phrased, "Grants to buy AdWords" which implies
that the AdWords are already buyable, (which could be pretty easily tested
with an AdWords account), and the difficulty the Ads crawler has with
discovering pernicious redirects, how could Google even _know_ that they were
selling an AdWord buy to a Jihadist?

But if it is possible, one has to assume that it happens right? These folks
are pretty savvy with the Internet. And if it happens, we all know Google's Ad
system is a bidding system right? So everyone bids, highest bidder gets the Ad
at the next lowest Bid rate [2]. So funding a competitor to bid on these Ads
will, by definition, force up the price paid for the Ads. Which effectively
translates to Google improving its advertising revenue by funding an alternate
bidder.

[0] which only works if you are able to keep the bad actors off the list.

[1] [http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/google-forfeits-500-million-
ge...](http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/google-forfeits-500-million-generated-
online-ads-prescription-drug-sales-canadian-online)

[2] [http://www.wordstream.com/articles/what-is-google-
adwords](http://www.wordstream.com/articles/what-is-google-adwords)

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justncase80
The George Orwell in me hates this... a lot.

Today it's jihadis tomorrow its labor organizers.

