> If Google were in China, perhaps the young man named Wei Zesi would not have died as a result of deadly fake medical advertisements searched through Baidu.
As the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi makes clear, those medical adverts were not fake. They were certainly deadly. They were also run by the Second Hospital of the Beijing Armed Police Corps. A state owned hospital. On what basis would google refuse to run that ad? Barring them from advertising seems like a great way to get a midnight knock at your door from the Beijing Armed Police Corp. And it's not like an algorithm will easily tell when medical claims are is truthful.
Would the auction algorithm produced a different ad result? Google's pay per click model maximizes revenue per ad shown, not human welfare; presumably the hospital willing to pay to get to the top of the searches is willing to go the extra mile to improve click thru rates.
Would marking it more clearly as an ad have made a difference? Google is already walking down that slippery slope; today Google places ads directly in line with search results. If Baidu is able to legally get away without even marking ads, it seems like Google is an A/B test away from a very profitable locale specific change to the UI.
Just come here, not to debate, but to add some background information about its public perception.
The Cancer Center and other departments of the Second Hospital of the Armed Police Beijing Corps were actually outsourced to the operation of the Putian network, the latter has a long history of false advertising of various ineffective medical treatments.
Basically, the general public believes Baidu was the largest supporter of the Putian network, and Putian hospitals may have contributed 12 billion RMB (1.8 billion US$) of the total of 26 billion RMB (4 billion US$) in ad revenues reported by Baidu that year.
As the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi makes clear, those medical adverts were not fake. They were certainly deadly. They were also run by the Second Hospital of the Beijing Armed Police Corps. A state owned hospital. On what basis would google refuse to run that ad? Barring them from advertising seems like a great way to get a midnight knock at your door from the Beijing Armed Police Corp. And it's not like an algorithm will easily tell when medical claims are is truthful.
Would the auction algorithm produced a different ad result? Google's pay per click model maximizes revenue per ad shown, not human welfare; presumably the hospital willing to pay to get to the top of the searches is willing to go the extra mile to improve click thru rates.
Would marking it more clearly as an ad have made a difference? Google is already walking down that slippery slope; today Google places ads directly in line with search results. If Baidu is able to legally get away without even marking ads, it seems like Google is an A/B test away from a very profitable locale specific change to the UI.