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The evil that is (now) Google

Don't be evil, that used to be Google's mantra.

I fondly recall the days when Google's new search engine was absolutely thrashing the likes of AltaVista, Lycos and the rest.

Not only was Google's search engine a whole lot better at producing relevant, accurate and comprehensive results but it wasn't littered with endless advertising. The front page was clean, white and ad-free -- something rather important back in the days when we were using dial-up modems with very limited speeds.

Back then, the mantra "Don't be evil" was accurate and people just loved Google for what seemed like a user-centric focus.

Google could do no wrong and it was very instrumental in making the internet, particularly the web, as ubiquitous as it is today.

But my, how times have changed.

The Google of today is anything but kind, benevolent and user-focused.

It would appear that Google has become the very thing it told others not to be: evil!

For my first piece of evidence I cite this Arstechnica piece that reports Google won’t honor medical leave during its layoffs, outraging employees. Due to the way that Google has, in the past, offered comprehensive on-site health-care to its workers, being laid off can have pretty nasty effects for those reliant on those services.

However, that's nothing compared to the way it's treating its responsibilities as an advertising network.

I've already spoken about how Google thinks nothing of promoting scams via its advertising -- completely ignoring reports which highlight the scams and preferring instead to just keep taking the money and lining its pockets while countless victims continue to be duped.

Well recently I've discovered another distasteful bit of evil on the part of this advertising service.

My YouTube videos have been bombarded with ads from "Bet 22", an online gambling service which promotes itself as a legal service here in NZ.

Let's stop for a moment and recognise that gambling is, for some, an addiction that can ruin lives. According to this site "In 2018, an estimated 76,000 New Zealanders aged 15 years and older were at moderate to high risk of harm from gambling".

Now I'm no prude so I guess there's no problem with advertising a legal gambling service however it seems that Google is not honouring its "block this ad" option with these ads.

To clarify, whenever you see an ad served up by the Google network there is a little "(i)" symbol you can click to opt-out of seeing that ad again. I use this quite frequently when I'm presented with an ad that is poorly targeted towards me... in the hope that Google's system will at least learn to show me ads I might find some value in.

Well over the past week I've opted out of seeing these Bet22 ads dozens of times... yet I'm still being shown the same few ads, over and over again. Google tells me "You should not see this ad again when logged in" -- yet it continues to show me the same ads.

If this was a regular ad for web-hosting, a VPN or whatever I wouldn't really mind so much but I can imagine the effect of this on someone who's trying to wean themselves off a gambling addiction or who might be bordering on becoming a gambling addict. To keep showing such people these ads, even after they have repeatedly tried to opt-out and been promised that the ad will no longer appear -- is EVIL!

To be honest, I think Google should be sued for this. They obviously have no social conscience, no ethics and no morals. The only thing Google is interested in is the money they get from the advertisers -- and to hell with the consequences that someone might suffer as a result.

I have documented all this in a video that I'll be publishing shortly where you can see me block the ad more than a dozen times, be assured by Google that it's been blocked and then see it re-appear just hours or minutes later. Hopefully someone will use this as evidence to take a court action against Google for abusing their advertising position to inflict pain and suffering on problem-gamblers and their families.

They say money corrupts and perhaps modern-day Google is the single best proof of this that is to be found anywhere.

Carpe Diem folks!

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