
How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads - AJ007
http://www.knife-depot.com/blog/how-google-sliced-away-our-knife-ads/
======
DanielBMarkham
You cannot wield the kind of economic power Google does and not be evil, at
least for the working definition many people have of "evil".

We've put a huge hunk of our intellectual and economic capital under the
control of a marketing company. I really, really like Google, but I don't see
this situation as being stable over a period of decades. Maybe 5-10 more years
or so, but not a lot longer.

These kinds of decisions, where we pick economic winners and losers, are
_political_ decisions, no matter who makes them. (Personally I abhor making
them, but that doesn't change what they are). These knife guys have
representatives. Indeed, every small business Google has run over has
democratic representation. Each year Google continues to make these decisions
the political hue and cry will increase. This can't go on forever like this.
"Don't be evil" was a great slogan, but its days are numbered. Perhaps over.

Side note: one of the ways I can tell Google's power has grown too large is
the elliptical way many commenters have of criticizing it. They're unhappy
with its actions, perhaps even livid, but it's always a tone of "Golly! This
is really unfortunate and I'm sure nobody at Google really meant to do this,
but...."

This is the same way you'd criticize a king, somebody you are beholden to.
"Golly! I know you, the king, are not at fault, but some of these advisers of
yours must have accidentally goofed up somewhere..."

Whereas if Dell, the electric company, or the garage down the street screws up
in your eyes? Different tone entirely.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
>This is the same way you'd criticize a king, somebody you are beholden to.
"Golly! I know you, the king, are not at fault, but some of these advisers of
yours must have accidentally goofed up somewhere..."

I don't buy it. People don't criticize a king _at all_. You don't criticize
the communist party in Stalinist Russia, tactfully or otherwise. Doing that
gets you sent to the gulag.

The reason people say that it was a probably a mistake is that it was probably
a mistake. There is no apparent malicious objective for Google to stop taking
this company's money.

There are really only two plausible causes for this. The first is some
bureaucratic red tape within Google, where some employee made a poor decision
and no one has corrected it yet. The second is that this isn't Google at all,
it's the government putting pressure on Google to stop doing business with
certain types of companies, and then it's Google being beholden to the
government and having to do its bidding.

And I have to say the second one is a lot more plausible. Google has every
incentive to take an advertiser's money. They're a publicly traded company.
They have an obligation to the shareholders. Turning down paying customers
because of some moral objection to pointy objects is a little bit crazy.
Turning down paying customers because otherwise the government is going to
start harassing you is a lot more rational.

Of course, it could actually be both. Congress is fond of passing laws against
doing business with "criminals" or "terrorist organizations" or whoever may be
found wearing an Anti-Flag shirt, and lawyers are fond of the phrase "out of
an abundance of caution." Put the two together and you get a de jure ban on
certain things and a de facto ban on anything that might be sold in the same
showcase as those things. And if you don't like that then you might want to
stop voting for Congress critters who support the Patriot Act.

~~~
quanticle

        I don't buy it. People don't criticize a king at all. You don't criticize the
        communist party in Stalinist Russia, tactfully or otherwise. Doing that gets you
        sent to the gulag
    

That's not true. Even during the Stalinist period in Russia or the Maoist
period in China, there was still criticism of the government. It's just that
criticism was phrased in language that was politically acceptable to the
leaders. Individual cases of corruption and mismanagement could and were
exposed and castigated, but as long as one was careful to emphasize that they
were exposing and castigating the individual case of corruption (as opposed to
the system as a whole), one could obliquely criticize the system.

That's exactly what I'm seeing here. Small businesses are afraid of Google.
They're afraid to directly criticize the general principles behind Google
AdWords program. But they can highlight individual failures of the Google
AdWords program, and, as long as they emphasize that they're talking about
this _specific_ business or that _specific_ account, they can obliquely
criticize the general principles.

~~~
pekk
Are you seriously defending the comparison between Google and Mao?

~~~
PavlovsCat
A comparison about a specific aspect doesn't mean equating the two. So if
that's all you have to criticize, it's probably valid.

------
josefresco
Being an AdWords veteran (having managed campaigns for several clients) all I
could do was nod my head grumble under my breath about how this is "business
as usual" for Google.

One of my clients who was selling in the health market had this and other
seemingly "unfair" treatments happen again and again over the years. All the
while Google was taking money from Canadian "pharmacies" and allowing big
brand competitors to violate the same rules they were coming down on my
clients for.

The kick is that sometimes you just luck out. Your ads are reviewed by another
(anonymous) staffer who doesn't interpret the rules in the same way.

We found the best way to avoid issues like this was: never edit an existing
approved ad. Seems silly but we cringed each time we had to edit or submit a
new ad knowing that some random reviewer would roll the dice and deliver a
verdict.

Finally however Google banned most of our most effective keywords, while at
the same time allowing our competitors (both larger and smaller) to continue
on without interruption.

~~~
cromwellian
Google got sued over online drug ads before and had to pay $500 million in
fines. The US Government was even running a _criminal probe_ against Google
that could have put executives in _jail_ for these kinds of ads. So you can
only imagine they are a lot more careful now given that experience.

Alcohol, Weapons, and Drugs are areas regulated by various governments around
the world and carry civil and criminal policies for even small violations.

You say health market, but don't specify details. Might this have been for
quack homeopathy junk, diet pills that don't work, vitamins? Every time I hear
a health related ad on the radio it is for some bullshit product backed by
outright lies about "clinical studies show NutriWeightBlah will lose you 20
pounds in only 2 weeks", and bogus testimonials.

If Google is shutting down ads for that kind of product, I can only give them
kudos, for essentially banning con-men who take advantage of desperate people.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
What credentials does Google have to decide what is bogus versus what is not?
Why should they get to decide what ads (for legal products) have a chance of
being shown to me? Perhaps more importantly, especially for entrepreneurs, why
should the effective "gateway to the Internet" be allowed to capriciously
choose to favor established brands over small companies?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
It's not so much that they _get_ to decide as much as thu are being _told_ to
decide. Google would much rather operate in a safe harbour where they act as
an indiscriminate marketplace for advertising, with the advertisers being
responsible for compliance. Regulators, however, find it easier to go after
bottlenecks versus chasing down individual offenders. This makes compliance
the marketplaces' problem.

The alternative would require giving regulators the resources and power to
screen through advertisements and pursue every offender individually.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Certainly, and to the extent Google is required to intervene, I have no
problem. It's when it goes the next step and says, "Google has decided _foo_
objects are bad, therefore, thou shalt not sell them", independent of any
regulatory concerns, that I have problem.

TFA is a gray area. I don't have a problem with Google's requirement so much
as their capricious implementation. But if they decide it's OK to say, "We
don't like the sound of that type of offer. You shall not pass." That I would
have a real problem.

To be clear, this is a hypothetical brought up by the parent of my original
post and referring to things like miracle diet ads that he/she doesn't like.

------
jordoh
This seems like a pretty clear-cut case of assuming that there is some
intentional malice or favoritism in actions that are the result of an
automated system.

\- Google adds some terms like "assisted opening knife" and "assist folding
knife" so they are recognized as prohibited knife ads. Adding these terms
could very well have been automated based on the terms having a strong
association with other terms found alongside prohibited items.

\- knife-depots' account suddenly contains X% disallowed knife ads, based on
the new terms - where X is relatively large percentage. Account automatically
disabled.

\- Amazon and Walmart also have X% disallowed knife ads, but X is an extremely
small percent of their overall number of items. Accounts remain active.

Fortunately, AdWords is one of the few Google properties where you can
actually get a human on the phone and have them intervene with the automated
results (though it can certainly take a lot of back and forth, in my personal
experience).

In a more general sense, this is something that you constantly run in to if
you have your automated systems performing any action that a user could view
as punitive. I've yet to see a site that was open about automated actions
being such - likely because they don't want to make it too easy to automate
getting around the automated rules - but it does seem like there is a
reasonable amount of explanation of the system that could diffuse these
assumptions of persecution.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I don't think it works that way.

When you say _"Amazon and Walmart also have X% disallowed knife ads, but X is
an extremely small percent of their overall number of items. Accounts remain
active."_ the implication is that total ad spend vs banned ad ratio prevails.
That would suggest that the knife guys could start advertising flowers, buy
90% of their AdWords for their buddy the florist and only 10% of their AdWords
for their knives and be Okay. I don't think it would work out.

Google is just acting poorly here, why doesn't matter. As the original poster
points out, 'assisted open' knives are legal for sale in the US (even in
California which is kind of picky about such things). They aren't part of the
terms of service explicitly, so either they are or they aren't. And if they
are, they are for everybody, and if they aren't they are aren't for everybody.

I'm sure if .01% of WalMart's ad spend was for Canadian pharmaceuticals that
they would be shut down in a heartbeat (because the Government really came
down hard on Google for that).

Its common knowledge that one of the ways larger successful sellers on Ebay
harass smaller sellers is by reporting them for various rules violations. When
a "Power Seller" has a dedicates account manager inside Ebay they don't have
to put up with random reports like the small guy who randomly gets someone in
the problem reporting staff. That asymmetry is exploited to mitigate small
seller effectiveness. I have no idea if this goes on in "AdWord" competitors
but some of the lawsuits I've read from various people (especially on
contested keywords) suggests the advertisers (or their agencies) aren't above
such tactics.

~~~
jordoh
Do you have evidence to support the assertion that it isn't purely percentage
based? Perhaps there is some account out there that has the same ratio of
prohibited items as knife-depot, but has not been banned?

Whether AdWords should allow "assisted open knife" ads is beside the point.
Correct or not, AdWords is counting those as prohibited, the allegation of the
OP is that AdWords banning criteria are applied differently to large accounts.
I'm suggesting that the criteria is applied _exactly the same_, based on a
percentage.

What I'm describing is also how Google Product Listing Ads get moderated: if
X% of your items are in violation, your account is automatically shut down,
pending appeal. Google sends a warning when you reach (X - Y)%, and another
email when you reach X% and your account is shut down. I administrate 30,000+
PLA accounts and deal with this on a daily basis. This banning process is
completely automated.

~~~
ChuckMcM
_"Do you have evidence to support the assertion that it isn't purely
percentage based?"_

No. I reasoned to it by flipping it over. If the banning is purely percentage
based then a viable business would be to create an entity that laundered
AdWords spend. This is how it would work.

Let's call our company "Ads-r-us" and it contracts with Knife Depot and 1-800
Flowers. It charges Knife Depot a 'premium' to get its 'ban-inducing ads' and
it charges 1-800-Flowers a discount because its ads are "clean." It structures
the premium and the discount such that there is a bit of cream in the middle
for it to keep. Then our entity goes off and buys Ad insertions at various bid
points. Knife Depot can advertise forever since there is no risk of them being
banned because Ads-R-Us is keeping the percentages in check.

I looked around for these guys, I don't see them. (And as a web search engine
they aren't talking to me either). So either they don't exist (which I reason
is unlikely given how much thought people put into 'scamming' the advertising
business on internet ads) or such a scheme wouldn't work. And if it really is
strictly percentage based it _would_ work.

From that my thinking was that it might not be purely percentage based. No one
is picking up the Canadian Pharma ads, and they have a LOT of money to throw
around.

~~~
jordoh
There could be such a service flying under the radar, but third-party AdWords
resellers are required by the TOS to only use one account per client.

------
tehwalrus
(from UK, and happy to accept your downvotes):

I'm shocked that people litteraly sell knives _designed to hurt people_ on the
internet, and that people on HN come to the defence of these _arms dealers_. I
assumed this was about kitchen knives when I clicked on the link.

The US constitution was written with a right to bear arms so people could
_overthrow the government_ , not protect themselves from criminals. Since
then, that government has entrenched power to the point where it would be
nearly impossible for even another state to take it down, let alone a group of
armed civilians - thus rendering the constitutional clauses irrelevant to
their original purpose. _(note to secret services: no, I don't want to
overthrow governments or start wars, I'm talking hypothetically.)_

In the rest of the developed world where weapons are generally banned, as they
are in the UK, criminals simply _don't use weapons_ on civilians (apart from
high value targets, perhaps) because the penalties for doing so are so harsh.
Criminals literally throw their guns away in a chase, rather than use them on
the police/get caught with them. Police are generally unarmed, apart from
specially trained units (dawn raids, at airports, etc).

This is the sole reason I would never _ever_ consider living in the USA - the
risk from a) criminals, b) civilian "heros" and c) the police themselves, all
of whom are armed to the teeth, legally. Terrifying.

~~~
Zak
To provide a rather different perspective, I was born and raised in Alaska
where pretty much everybody has several guns. Granted, many of those guns are
designed more for killing bears and moose than people, but they'll do the job,
and most people have a combat-oriented pistol or two. I got a rifle for my
fifth birthday.

 _I'm shocked that people litteraly sell knives designed to hurt people on the
internet, and that people on HN come to the defence of these arms dealers._

Most of the knives in question are general-purpose utility knives. They are
not designed to hurt people, and that is not the reason most people own them.
I carry a Kershaw Leek myself; it has a 3 inch blade, assisted opening, a
frame lock and a pocket clip. I routinely use it to open packages, trim rough
edges off various objects, cut rope, strip wire, scrape contaminants off
surfaces and remove those nasty little sticky screw covers from laptop
computers. I have studied and practice the use of a knife as a weapon, but
that is not a significant reason I carry a knife, and I would carry a
different knife (or more likely, a pistol) if it was.

I've been to the UK. I did not bring my knife because I knew it would be
illegal to carry there. Turns out, it's probably illegal to _own_ there, and
the multitool I usually keep in my backpack might be illegal to carry in
public because it has a locking blade. I never really noticed how much I use
my knife until I started going to Europe regularly and couldn't bring it
along. I'm _constantly_ reaching for it and finding it missing. I've been
carrying a knife of some sort since I was 12.

 _Since then, that government has entrenched power to the point where it would
be nearly impossible for even another state to take it down, let alone a group
of armed civilians - thus rendering the constitutional clauses irrelevant to
their original purpose._

Aside from the fact that some Americans aren't so happy about that, I think
you're mistaken. A large minority of the civilian population would have a much
easier time deposing the government and instituting a new one than a foreign
state (or group of US states attempting to secede) would. A foreign state
attempting to overthrow the US government would have to deal with a fully
committed US military _and_ a large portion of the civilian population, which,
as you noted is well armed. A large minority of the population rising up
against the government would likely gain the support of some of the military
and could blend in with the rest of the population when not fighting.

 _In the rest of the developed world where weapons are generally banned, as
they are in the UK, criminals simply don't use weapons on civilians because
the penalties for doing so are so harsh_

I don't think that's the reason. Penalties for being a felon in possession of
a firearm in most US states are severe. Having a weapon while committing a
crime, even if it was otherwise legal to have the weapon and the weapon was
not used in the crime usually comes with a significant mandatory minimum
prison sentence. Firing a gun during another crime means decades in prison.

Criminal-on-civilian violence actually _is_ pretty rare though; the vast
majority of violent felonies in the US are criminal-on-criminal. The danger to
civilians from Johnny the drug dealer shooting Jimmy the drug dealer is small.

~~~
polyfractal
> _A large minority of the civilian population would have a much easier time
> deposing the government and instituting a new one than a foreign state (or
> group of US states attempting to secede) would. [...] A large minority of
> the population rising up against the government would likely gain the
> support of some of the military and could blend in with the rest of the
> population when not fighting._

I think this is pretty rosy-colored view of what would happen. A "large
minority" would have to be several hundred thousand people, perhaps a few
million. Anything less is just a radical cult that will promptly be put
down...and everyone will say "thank goodness" as they watch on the evening
news. If something big enough happens that a few million people take up arms,
you have a full blown civil war and things are totally different.

Stockpiling guns and weapons is the opiate of libertarians - "it's fine, I
have the weaponry I need to overthrow the government if things get bad
enough". In reality, you have a better chance fighting zombies than
successfully overthrowing the government through violent means.

To be clear, I have nothing against guns. I'll probably purchase one once I've
moved into a more rural area. But I'm under no illusion that the weapon will
_ever_ be useful in deposing any government.

~~~
Zak
_A "large minority" would have to be several hundred thousand people, perhaps
a few million._

You'll get no dispute from me on that point. I don't even think that it
matters much whether a group of the appropriate size starts out armed; the
benefit to such a group from having an armed population has more to do with
knowing how to use weapons that having stockpiles of them.

------
pud
Whenever I ban a user from one of my sites for an infraction, he invariably
points to several other infracting users and says "well why do _they_ get to
post porn (or ads for weapons or whatever) and I don't?"

The reason is because I didn't catch the other users. Or their infraction
isn't as bad.

While I feel bad for the knife company, I also know dealing with user-
generated content (like these ads) is hard.

~~~
josefresco
"The reason is because I didn't catch the other users. Or their infraction
isn't as bad."

That's _your_ reason, not Google's. Google knows full well who is bidding on
what keyword. Are you suggesting they are under-staffed, under budgeted or
overwhelmed in their task of keeping AdWords clean? I'm not buying it. Google
has the resources to evenly apply guidelines, they're not a one-man show who's
too busy to squash out violators.

~~~
kkowalczyk
The famous last words.

Of course they are overwhelmed by the taks of keeping AdWords clean, just like
Apple is overwhelmed by the task of timely approving apps for App Store,
despite having more money than god and the number of AdWord ads submitted to
Google is several orders of magnitude greater than number of Apps submitted to
Apple.

Processes that involve humans are inherently non-scalable and determining
whether an ad crosses the line of acceptable usage is a human task.

And humans have different opinions so there will never be "evenly applying
guidelines", not for google ads, not for App Store apps. The only time 3
people have exactly the same opinion is when 2 of them are dead.

~~~
paborden
Reminds me of the time an Apple staffer called me to discuss an app I had
submitted.

"We'd rather discuss this on the phone," he said.

"What's up?"

"We can approve your app, but can you please remove all references to midgets
touching themselves, first?"

Would've paid to have seen that in writing.

~~~
fnayr
I need to download that app NOW

------
onemorepassword
Oh, the irony of publicizing the same knives via YouTube, the Google property
that censors boobies but allows you to promote machine guns to a global
audience...

~~~
kyrra
(At least in the US) weapons and violence are fine in video/audio format,
while naked people are not. I'm not sure how much this has to do with Google
than it does the regulations imposed by the FCC and social norms.

~~~
viggity
the fcc has nothing to do with it. there are plenty of places on the internet
that have pr0n (legally). it is more about american social norms.

------
samd
What's really important is this line:

"For that reason, we wanted to let you guys, loyal Cutting Edge readers and
Knife Depot fans, _know that you might not being seeing Knife Depot ads
peppered across the Internet._ "

If you don't get to advertise with Google you basically don't get to advertise
on the Internet. That's a powerful monopoly, one they've had for years, and
that's the real story here. You have to deal with Google and all their
idiosyncratic/evil/whatever behavior because there's no alternative.

~~~
gwern
People were criticizing the infrastructure analogy made for Google Reader
recently; so you can imagine how amused I was, while reading Levy's _In The
Plex_, to read this bit:

> While some Googlers felt singled out unfairly for the attention, the more
> measured among them understood it as a natural consequence of Google’s
> increasing power, especially in regard to distributing and storing massive
> amounts of information. “It’s as if Google took over the water supply for
> the entire United States,” says Mike Jones, who handled some of Google’s
> policy issues. “It’s only fair that society slaps us around a little bit to
> make sure we’re doing the right thing.”

(In a part generally about advertising, fittingly enough.)

------
rdl
I'm in favor of banning porn ads (generally), since those tend to be offensive
to a lot of people and also are highly correlated with spammy behavior, but
I'd be tempted to boycott a vendor who prohibited weapons ads for any reason
other than legal compliance.

Amazon is pretty reasonable (knives are fine, firearms accessories are fine,
but firearms and ammunition are out due to compliance issues). Google has no
excuse.

~~~
tjic
> Amazon is pretty reasonable (knives are fine, firearms accessories are fine,
> but firearms and ammunition are out

As a target shooter, I don't find this any more reasonable than a gay person
might find "personal ads are fine, but not gay personal ads".

All too often our definition of "reasonable" is "gores HIS ox but not mine".

~~~
Spooky23
I think the difference is that firearms are heavily regulated by localities in
different ways.

For example, transport over state lines may require coordination with the
shipper. For Amazon, having attorneys stay up to date on the law in multiple
jurisdictions doesn't fit with their operating model.

Knives are less difficult regulatory-wise, and where there are local legal
issues, they usually aren't serious felonies.

~~~
hfsktr
I used to work at a shop that sold firearms (among many other things) online.
I didn't see all the laws we had to follow but quite a few I noticed (I worked
on the intranet site).

Unless the customer was coming to pick up the weapon themselves (at our
location) we would only ship guns to FFL's[1]. The FFL was also the one who
did the background check as far as I'm aware. I don't know what percentage of
our sales were local pickups but I am guessing we did the background for those
(we had an FFL).

They shut down but the company made it up to 70 or so employees. I don't know
how we kept up on the laws. Our suppliers might have done that as we were sort
of a middleman from the suppliers to the customers. I do remember that we
needed to track a lot of things for the ATF and they had to be very accurate.
The ATF would come in once a year or so and audit the logs and other things
related to shipping. I never saw them but I remember the boss(es) being
stressed during those weeks.

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Firearms_License>

~~~
rdl
Yeah, compliance is tricky. You _can_ ship (e.g. a repair, or mailing a
firearm to yourself if you don't take luggage on a flight), but it's a huge
amount of complexity. Initial sale must be in-person or ship to an FFL or a
few exemptions (C&R, CMP, pre-1898, 80%), and of course all the non-firearms
parts which Amazon usually _does_ sell. Ammunition is more tightly regulated
than e.g. barrels.

Once you add in state laws (e.g. Californians can't buy rifles in Nevada in
person, although Nevadans and most other state residents can), and the
penalties for non-compliance, and I don't think it's reasonable to require
Amazon deal with firearms.

Through Marketplace it might be a little bit more vague. But a pure
advertising site _should_ be comfortable running firearms ads. If the owner is
personally opposed to firearms, no one is forcing him to carry those ads, but
I'm a (very small) part owner of Google, so for a public company, it's
probably not a great position to take.

------
JumpCrisscross
There may be merit in splitting Google's Search and Advertising businesses.
Advertising would pay Search (or Bing or Duck Duck Go) to place ads in its
results via an API. Search would indiscriminately host ads posted to it by ad
brokers, of which Advertising would be one. Search would be freed from having
to police advertisements. Advertising's policing would be checked by
competitive pressure.

In a stylised securities transaction we have customers, brokers, and an
exchange. Customers have choices between brokers. Brokers, of which there are
many, exercise discretion in how much capability they give which customers.
The exchange, of which there is one, exercises discretion in which brokers it
transacts with, but _not which customers get to transact on it_. This is
important since the exchange has something approaching monopoly power. It also
means the exchanges aren't liable for non-compliant customers - the brokers
are.

Skip back to Google. Search is the exchange and Advertising is the broker. The
exchange only permits one broker. Naturally, the broker-exchange is liable for
policing non-compliant and stupid customers (barring a very large expansion in
government which would permit it to monitor all transactions going through
Google). It has also extended its exchange monopoly power to its broker.

We love disintermediation. But intermediaries facilitate checks on
concentration in a competitive system.

------
anigbrowl
I watched his video that purported to explain the difference between a
switchblade and a spring assisted knife. As far as I can tell the only
difference is that the location of the switch has changed. This is a
distinction without a substantive difference. So yo would need a slightly
different hand movement to trigger this alternative spring-assisted knife. Big
deal; as someone who used to like knives enough to have a small collection, I
think I could get the necessary movement down in 10 or 15 minutes if someone
handed me one of these

I have nothing against this guy promoting his business, but this is a
switchblade as far as I'm concerned, just a slightly different design.

~~~
mtraven
According to their site the assisted-opening knives are legal in all states,
whereas switchblades aren't, so there must be some meaningful distinction
(unless the law just hasn't caught up yet).

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm pretty sure it's the latter. I strongly suspect 'legal in all states'
means that it just hasn't come to court yet. It's possible that the legal
definition of a switchblade is so specific (eg about the button being on the
handle of the knife and a safety switch being present) that this new design
doesn't qualify, in which case this new design would be legal unless or until
states see fit to prevent its sale.

~~~
NoPiece
Folding knives aren't new, and aren't primarily intended as an alternative to
switchblades. Folding the blade into the handle just makes an easy to carry
package, with your are a contractor, or a sportsman. Knife regulation is
mostly around the length, not whether it folds or not.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Knives>

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm not talking about folding knives; I have on in my pocket hanging off my
keychain right now and I understand the difference. I'm talking about the
spring-assisted mechanism.

~~~
NoPiece
The spring assistance in these knives doesn't cause the blade to move, it just
makes it easier to pull them out. That's basically the definitional difference
between them and switchblades.

------
ImprovedSilence
very slowly, but very, very surly, google is doing a complete 180 on "don't be
evil". I think the slow pressure of being a public company is really going to
strangle out much of the "good side" of Google. Everything they've done in the
past 1.5yrs has been terrible for their users.

~~~
analog
Hang on, what? Refusing to advertise knives which are clearly intended to be
used as weapons is 'evil' now is it?

~~~
betterunix
Knives are among the oldest and most versatile tools known to man. I have, on
occasion, used my pocket knife as a gardening tool, screwdriver, box cutter,
prying tool, wire stripper, wire cutter, torque wrench, and hammer. It is not
the best tool for any of the above, but sometimes you just lack the time
needed to go back to your garage and get your toolbox.

Nothing about "assisted opening knives" makes them "clearly intended to be
used as weapons." It is a convenience, just like my pocket knife conveniently
locks open. Why should a tool not be convenient?

Finally, the important distinction here is that Google is not refusing to
advertise these knives, they are only refusing to allow this one, small
company to advertise those knives. That is a key detail -- Google has no
problem with the knives when Amazon is selling them.

~~~
mrgoldenbrown
Actually it appears as though Google demanded that they stop selling those
knives altogether, not just stop advertising them through AdWords.

------
radtad
Search 'assisted opening knives' and you won't see any ads about such knives
EXCEPT for Amazon. You will also see "Shop for Assisted Opening Knives on
Google" which, if you follow the link, will show you a nice assortment of
about 14k assisted opening knives. This feels like an abuse of monopoly power.

~~~
hamax
I'm seeing adds for cabelas.com but not for amazon.

------
pja
I suspect the short question + answer is: are you buying Amazon or Walmart
levels of AdWords? No? Well, congratulations, you're SOL.

It's no wonder that Google has started pouring large amounts of effort into
lobbying in the last few years, because it's precisely this combination of de
facto monopoly combined with poor treatment of customers who have no-where
else to go that leads (eventually) to legislation or possibly even break-up of
the company in question.

To paraphrase a famous quote: you may not be interested in politics, but
politics is interested in you, whether you like it or not.

------
conductr
Google's not the only one who bans you. I'm at work: "This Websense category
is filtered: Weapons."

Yes, I work for a big company that filters the web and it does suck for me...
but since a lot of people shop online while at work, it also sucks for you

------
yalogin
I just realized that Adwords is Google's equivalent of the iOS app store. They
review stuff and either remove or block certain "items". I cannot help but
wonder how civil and accomodating the people effected by the adwords changes
are compared to the developers effected by the iOS app store. Is it just
because the developers know how to make noise better than the non-tech ones?

------
score
It's easy to see why Google banned these guys and not Amazon.com or Walmart. I
could sum it up in one word: trust. Amazon and Walmart have it, these guys
don't.

Personally, if I'm going to buy a knife, I'll buy it from Amazon. I trust them
on a whole bunch of levels that I don't trust these guys.

Is it fair? I've been doing SEO / PPC for over a decade and its _never, ever_
been fair.

------
danhodgins
If I was Knife Depot, I would focus on brainstorming a single opt-in offer
they could use to have all their marketing and advertising channels function
as a funnel for growing their email list.

"1 Badass Knife Per Week" is an opt-in offer that would get my attention, even
though I'm not a knife guy.

I expand on this idea in this post: <http://www.tinylever.com/one-badass-
knife-per-week>

Why be dependent on Google for your sales? Pay them once up front to help grow
your list, and you'll be able monetize each subscriber for their lifetime
using email - a FREE channel you own and control 100%.

A list is really where it's at, but to make list-building work you need a
single opt-in offer that will cause people to sign up on the spot.

If you'd like some ideas for crafting your opt in offer, reach out right now
by email: dan [at] tinylever [dot] com

------
robomartin
In the context of their world-wide monopoly, at one point we have to start
asking if Google has the right to censor or control anything this way.

Don't get me wrong, I hate the idea of government telling anyone what they can
and cannot do. Massive monopolies is one place where I can see a need for some
kind of legal intervention. The reason obviously being that a large monopoly
has no competing entity to force it to modify its behavior.

While it is true that Google tries to "clean-up" their search I think this is
almost an arrogant stance. How can a few hundred people be in charge of
deciding what you and I should and should not see? Methinks we should be given
control. If I don't like weapons of any kind I ought to be able to go to my
control panel and exclude them from my results. It should be my choice, not
theirs.

That said, these "assisted opening" blades are an obvious example of
exploiting a loophole in the laws. For all intents and purposes they are
switch blades. The end result is exactly the same: Open a knife very quickly.

Then there's the whole argument about how much sense it makes to granularly
ban stuff like this. I have no clue as to how much crime out there can be
attributed directly to switch blades. Probably not much at all. Although I do
remember that knives are on par with certain types of guns in terms of murders
per year.

Circling back, the "Google Syndrome" is one that is constantly growing in
threat level. I've said this many time. I like their services, but this
business of killing your account auto-magically with no real business process
in place to deal with the problems is just total bullshit. At one point it has
to stop. I have no clue what's going to make that happen, but it sure seems to
be leaving a path of destruction behind it.

The best thing we can do is stop using every new Google service they throw at
us. I know, it's hard to let go of the free drugs, but look at what you are
promoting and decide if this is what you want in the future five times over.

------
jawns
I'd be curious to know where Knife Depot is putting its advertising dollars
now that it's not spending on AdWords.

~~~
micahmcfarland
It looks like they haven't found another solution yet. FTA:

> For that reason, we wanted to let you guys, loyal Cutting Edge readers and
> Knife Depot fans, know that you might not being seeing Knife Depot ads
> peppered across the Internet.

------
arbuge
Google suspends AdWords acconts without much recourse all the time, as a quick
search on "adwords account suspended" shows. Doesn't matter if they're paying
customers, etc.

The thorny part about it is that the guidelines that can lead to suspension
change over time and deleting ads that are no longer in compliance might not
safeguard your account. I've known account holders that got suspended
retroactively for ads that are no longer in compliance, even though these ads
were actually deleted before the guidelines changed. The point seems to be
non-negotiable with Google though.

This can be pretty tragic for many small businesses since Google accounts for
such a huge percentage of search traffic. Larger customers typically have
dedicated account reps who I'm guessing might be able to help in these
situations.

------
tn13
There is one more point we all might be missing here. This is not just about
knief-depot.

It is unreasonable to believe that someone at Google said, "Hey, I dont like
these knief-depot people, let us screw them to benefit Amazon".

Likely case is this. People at Amazon (or put other large company spending
significant amounts with Google) maintains a dashboard and does a competitor
analysis to find out that knief-depot is doing better than them and hence
there is scope for screwing this smaller company. They talk to google and
create problems from them. And I dont think they have singled out knife depot
alone, but they have done this with many more on the slippary slope.

This means that Google does have some non-transparent ways of doing business
when with comes to Adwords.

This is not just bad for Knife-depot but bad for all of us.

------
davebees
> We’d also been careful to not ever violate Google’s Adwords weapons policy,
> which prohibits “the promotion of knives, such as butterfly knives,
> (balisongs) and switchblades.”

Sounds like they were promoting knives, and hence violating the policy.

~~~
smusumeche
I'm not the OP, but I do work for Knife Depot. We have advertised with Google
for over 8 years and they ONLY prohibit butterfly, balisong, and
switchblade/automatic knives. We are within their guidelines.

------
xutopia
Is it really illegal to own a switch blade but legal to purchase and own
assault rifles?

~~~
mindcrime
Knives, nunchucks, brass knuckles, etc. are usually covered by state level
laws, from what I've seen, and the legality varies widely. Firearms are a
slightly different story, since the 2nd Amendment very specifically protects
firearms ownership. So yes, it is possible that somewhere or other, a switch
blade knife is illegal while an "assault rifle" is legal.

I saw "assault rifle" in quotes, because most people talking about these
issues have no clue what an "assault rifle" really is, and are repeating
garbage they heard from various anti-gun activist groups, who routinely use a
totally bogus definition of "assault rifle" or "assault weapon". It's
important to understand that owning a _real_ assault rifle (that is, one
capable of select-fire / bust-mode / fully automatic operation) IS legal but
it's VERY highly regulated, VERY expensive, and you can only - as a civilian -
purchase weapons manufactured before 1986.

~~~
Anechoic
_since the 2nd Amendment very specifically protects firearms ownership_

I've seen folks use that rationale, but the 2A doesn't say "firearms" it says
"arms" - presumably "knives, nunchucks, brass knuckles, etc" would fall under
that, although that's clearly not how it's been interpreted.

~~~
mindcrime
FWIW, I just found this article / paper discussing the very issue of knives
and the 2nd Amendment.

[http://www.volokh.com/2013/03/25/knives-and-the-second-
amend...](http://www.volokh.com/2013/03/25/knives-and-the-second-amendment/)

The author(s) appear to take the position that knives _are_ protected under
the 2A and that many existing laws regulating knives are probably
unconstitutional. At least from the bit I've had time to read so far...

~~~
bashinator
If we're going to take a literalist reading of the 2A, shouldn't any armament
that can be carried by a single person ("bear arms") be protected?

------
ams6110
Comcast is doing something similar, they have banned advertising from
legitimate, legal gun shops, but of course continue to carry copious amounts
of programming featuring glorified, gratuitous gun violence.

I want to cancel my Comcast account; they used to be my only option but very
recently AT&T is now offering their "U-verse" internet in my neighborhood.

------
brador
Solution B: start second site with the questioned knives. Link from main site.
Keep adwords pointing to main site. ?

------
TomGullen
Here's one possible explanation. Amazon is a high value customer so Google
carefully reviewed their t&c to ensure their selling policies are in line with
googles own policies. They confidently know that amazon won't sell anything
illegal, and that amazon have measures in place to deal with rogue sellers on
their service. They know amazon has been around for a long time and are
trusted by google and the general public. They know that if amazon screws up,
amazon would probably take most of the heat. With this information google
considers amazon to be a low risk user of their services.

Knife depot is a small customer, and google cant justify the time to review
your policies and risk that accepting you as a customer entails. If you screw
up, google would probably take a large part of the blame.

The popular alternative hypothesis seem to be that google is pure evil.

~~~
senegoid
This is a fair comment. A company of Google's scale simply cannot monitor
every Adwords account for compliance, so they are being safe. It doesn't mean
this advertiser isn't untrustworthy or loose, just that Google cannot
effectively monitor advertisers of this size.

I also can't understand the mantra of 'don't be evil' still gets mentioned.
This is nothing more than cute brand association with no real grounding in
truth. Google are a public company who can be evil. It is like the platitude
that Google shuns product managers and welcomes engineers, implying that
Google products sell themselves because of rock-solid engineering (totally
disregarding the fact that Google have an aggressive sales force and have
spent billions on marketing activities, both directly and indirectly).

------
mgkimsal
I can imagine one of the justifications for letting walmart and others get
away with it is because they're big, but more specifically, their ad budgets
are big. But... so what? Where else are they going to go? Bing? Mapquest?

Perhaps if every major large retailer in the US shaved off a few percent of
their ad budget away from Google and gave it to one competitor, there'd be a
slim fighting chance of actually upsetting Google's dominance, but I'm pretty
sure that's not the case.

Relatedly(?), MS has avoided hardware for a long time... ostensibly under the
guise of "not upsetting their partners". But... what would the partners do?
Bundle Linux? In mobile, they're sort of doing this, but hardware partners
left MS not because MS was competing in the hardware business against them -
they left because the option (android) was better.

------
jroseattle
As more of these stories happen, Google adwords will simply consist of the
big-brand marketers. There is something I trust in this process -- the market.

Companies like knife-depot are specialty, niche, hyper-focused on their
particular product: knives. From their post, it's obvious they know those
products inside and out. WalMart, Target, Amazon? They don't know squat about
those products. If I want a specialty product such as the knife described in
the article, I trust a specialty shop much more than the bulk-focused vendors.

As Google runs more of the specialty folks away and caters more to the big
brands, I would venture they'll see click-through activity commensurate with
that change. And that's called opportunity in that space.

Nice going, Google.

------
DividesByZero
In the example video both knives seem like they do pretty much exactly the
same thing?

------
joey_muller
I predict Google will come around and open up your adwords account again.
Don't give up on it if, of course, you want their traffic. Were you running
product listing ads (PLAs) as well?

~~~
alekseyk
Not a single person from Google will ever read the e-mails from your Adwords
account unless you bring in thousands of dollars of revenue for them every
day.

~~~
nekitamo
I knew a person who used to spend $3000+ a day on Adwords who never got much
attention from Google (reseller in the cosmetics niche). The only thing he
mentioned is that at some point Google assigned him an Adwords account rep. He
followed the advice of the account rep and got all the ads and keywords
suggested by the rep banned. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Eventually the person's main account was banned. Last I talked to him he was
creating a bunch of fake accounts and running cloaked campaigns. It was much
easier for him to be non-compliant on Adwords than compliant.

------
aymeric
I got into the same situation with my outsourcing company
<http://taskarmy.com>

They suspended our account although we made the changes necessary to comply
with their terms of service (you can't guarantee 1st page in SEO services).

In the meantime, some of our competitors can still advertise their services.

Since my account has been suspended, it massively slowed down the growth and I
couldn't a better replacement.

------
jccalhoun
"After some deep thinking, we decided that serving our customer base, who
legally buy large amounts of assisted-opening knives, was more important than
continuing to advertise with Google. For this reason, we decided to not remove
the knives and forgo our Google Adwords account"

I'm not clear. Did Knife Depot remove their ads or did Google?

------
notdan
Ironically I can't view this "because it has been categorized
"Weapons;Shopping"" by the corporate firewall...

------
cm2012
Does anybody else notice that they now OWN Assisted Opening Knives in the
organic SERPS? Making Google ads, while useful, not as vital.

------
ritonlajoie
The real issue with these blogs is that there is no way to get to the main
website easily.

------
raheemm
Seriously, there is a need for a startup to disrupt the hell out of google.

------
sroerick
This is great PR.

------
alekseyk
Google is a two faced company who only cares about money.

And unlike other companies, they only care about BIG business money not small
business money.

I know that all too well, they banned one of the web sites I owned for 'adult'
content on first strike while competitors who had 10x the traffic (and 10x the
reports of user uploaded adult content) remained in their network.

I never spoke to a single person there, always a robot. That was back in 2003.

Now my headphone jack failed on brand new Nexus 4 and I never heard back from
Google at all.

This will bite them in the ass sooner or later.

~~~
oijaf888
NEXUS 4 POWER USER RIGHT HERE

------
corresation
<http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/176077?hl=en>

Company tried to sell a product that Google prohibits. Where is the story
here? Trying to say "well they do it too!" is not and is never a valid
complaint, just as it wasn't in primary school -- their day will come. Further
the desperate reaching to make Google evil is a stretch given that doing this
_can only possibly lose them money_ (favoring the "big guys" isn't rational
for a bid-based service, where the highest bid gets Google the most money,
regardless of the vendor).

The only real story here is that Google managed to achieve such dominance in
advertising (though it certainly isn't as absolute as some are pretending).

~~~
caf
The "big guys" sell a lot more products in a lot more categories, so are
presumably putting in a much larer number of bids - it is not hard to believe
that Google sees a lot more revenue from Amazon than some random knife shop.

~~~
corresation
I'm entirely sure that Amazon spends more. But _for that keyword_ whoever bids
the most spends the most. Google optimizes by the keyword, which of course
they should, just as companies like Amazon don't bid on keywords because
they're benevolent, but because they want to optimize their own return.
Removing players from the market cannot possibly serve Google's financial
interest, and that conspiratorial angle makes absolutely no sense.

Because their seems to be some confusion about how bid systems work (including
by the dead post below), if Amazon and others outbid this company, netting
more for Google, this would be a non-issue because you would have never seen
this company's products.

It is notable that Google absolutely bans knives in the context of weapons,
full stop (the author of the linked posting seems confused and thinks "such
as" gives the specific culprits, when those are merely examples). This company
may have authored their ads in a weapons manner, or targeted weapons-type
keywords -- the sort of nonsense that gets Google sued by a bunch of state
Attorneys down the road, everyone clucking about how evil Google is selling
(indirectly) the knife that the kid used to do some evil.

EDIT: The only possible favoritism that Google might be showing her is in the
context of legal responsibility. If some random knife site sells a kid a knife
via a Adwords ad, everyone will come gunning for Google. If Walmart sells a
knife to some kid, everyone will go gunning for Walmart, regardless of how
they got the initial contact.

~~~
caf
I don't think the keywords are relevant. The policy is _"if you sell any
weapon-knives, then you can't use AdWords at all"_ \- nothing to do with
keywords. The point being that Google would stand to lose a lot more revenue
by enforcing an AdWords death-penalty against Amazon than they would against a
much smaller business, like the one in question here.

I don't see a conspiracy here, either - it just looks like the huge
advertisers like Amazon have a lot more leverage in their relationship with
Google than the tiny ones do, so are less likely to have the rules enforced as
strictly against them.

------
akproxy
Waahaa!!!

The beauty of Hacker News!

It started at Google Adwords and is now going to Communist China and Stalinist
Russia!! Just have a look at the comment threads.

Not bad!

------
capo
Why is this sort of post even on HN, not to mention the front page? and why is
this thread dominated by idiotic language about "evil" and "kings" and
incoherent babbling about politics and democratic representation?! and
suddenly everyone is a law scholar.

I blame Matt Cutts' occasional appearances for the subsequent flocking of SEO
sorts here. This post doesn't belong on HN, certainly not on the front page.

~~~
throwaway420
> I blame Matt Cutts' occasional appearances for the subsequent flocking of
> SEO sorts here. This post doesn't belong on HN, certainly not on the front
> page.

Your anger is misplaced. The blame is solely on Google for not having an
adequate customer service department.

When Google has arbitrary decided that your business is in violation of some
of its rules, you end up falling into a Kafkaesque nightmare of form responses
and then you stop getting even those. The only way to get a response from
Google in these cases is to _LITERALLY_ get a popular post on Reddit or Hacker
News. That's why small businesses post about this stuff here. Don't blame
them.

Blame Google for not providing a decent customer service center because they
want to shave a tiny bit of expenses.

~~~
capo
So HN has to be the consumer service?! that's not what this place is about.

~~~
throwaway420
* Technical issues that affect the livelihoods of almost every person on here are important. The fact that this has so many upvotes is indicative of that.

* Unfortunately, because Google is on the surface a very friendly company, many technical people place Google on a pedestal and actually believe their slogan about doing no evil. It's just a slogan, and yes, Google does do a lot of evil.

* I suspect that you've never experienced the frustration of having your entire business on the line and not even being able to get a human response from Google. If you've ever been in that situation, I think you'd be able to understand how frustrating Google actually is.

