A Search Engine-Legal/Public Relations Hodgepodge

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Some interesting stories on Marketing Pilgrim this morning.

First, the Chinese and Yahoo:

“Free speech rights as we understand them in the United States are not the law in China,” Yahoo said in a statement Monday. “Every sovereign nation has a right to regulate speech within its borders.”

This no doubt has human rights activists up in arms, but does Yahoo have a point? Is this a matter of Chinese law rather than U.S. values? I believe we’re going to see more and more of this in the future. The Internet is not a U.S. entity. It is owned by no nation, but every nation wants the right to regulate what can be accessed through within the boundaries of their borders. Do nations have that right? If not, who does?

(Pilgrim) Now that more of the NYT’s archives are appearing in Google’s search results, many individuals are finding their past is catching up with them. Worse, it’s the NYT’s version of their past that contains misinformation.

In out litigious society, this could be cause for a few lawsuits. But who would those injured sue? Google or the New York Times? Maybe both?

What happens if an old news story that contains false or unverified information appears online? This is another reason you should be paying attention to online reputation management.

These stories weren’t on Marketing Pilgrim’s blog, but they’re interesting nonetheless:

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Google Inc. said Tuesday it will serve as the exclusive provider of auction-based text advertisments throughout Time Warner Inc.’s CNN.com

I think we’ll see more of this type of buddy/buddy advertising from big media in the future as well. The Internet is quickly becoming the playground of large media companies just like TV has been for the past 50 years. Anyone care to guess who will eventually rise to the top (Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, et. al.)?

(Turncoat) If AOL is serious about wanting to improve DMOZ, this would be a good place to start. For now, I’ll join the crowd of people saying Google should stop using DMOZ. Of course there are editors who do a good job, but these mob like practices make it impossible to work with and for.

You’ll have to read the whole story to get the full picture, but this DMOZ editor is the Martin Luther of online directories. Well, not quite, but this is quite telling. Do the right thing and even the has-beens will get you. It really is the wild west, isn’t it?

(Source) The new allowed sites feature now seems to be live for all AdSense publishers. Just login to your account and go to https://www.google.com/adsense/publisher-whitelist-view.

I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on any of this ….

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2 Comments

Comment by Rob Jones

Made Monday, 3 of September , 2007 at 3:52 am

If you read the closely, the Dmoz ex editor (your “online Martin Luther”) later admits the site he was trying to get in was for someone with whom he was “a close friend of a friend”. The site had been banned because the webmaster offered a bribe to list it.
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If someone decides “I’ll list my buddies site despite the fact that he’s banned for corrupt practices” it hardly begs a comparison to Martin Luther. Somehow I thought the web community wanted Dmoz to police its own and avoid bribes and such.
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As for his claims he was canned without warning by some roving meta-thugs, we hear that from every editor that gets canned. I’ve edited there almost since the beginning and the largest population screaming about corruption are guys that got kicked out for practicing it.
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Just thought I’d pass it on. I’m not a meta, I just get tired of the silly protestations of innocence from those that know better.

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Tuesday, 4 of September , 2007 at 5:56 pm

Thanks Rob for setting the record straight.

As for the web community, I don’t know that many of us pay much attention to DMOZ any more. Some in the community would actually prefer that Google drop DMOZ and end the courtship.