Google, now with even more Evil
Feel free to mark today on your calendar as the day Google officially lost the right to claim they do no evil. Via JenSense, they’ve updated their policy to ban sites that use other ad types of the same appearance and color as the AdSense unit on those sites. This essentially means they are telling their publishers that they can’t try similar ad units from other ad networks or affiliate programs if they want to keep using AdSense.
Feeling the heat are we?
As I mentioned just yesterday, there are competitors to AdSense popping up everywhere in the form of private labeled PPC networks, and all of them offer things Google can’t or won’t. Meanwhile Yahoo and MSN are upgrading their networks and leveraging the sweet sweet data they gather from their userbases to deliver better targeted ads, among other things.
As an Evil Marketer, I am torn. I would usually be more than happy to welcome Google to the ranks of evil marketers (if only I could charge dues), but preventing publishers from optimizing their sites — which usually requires some sort of A/B testing of competing ad units — is against the Evil Marketer creed. I’m afraid I can’t endorse this kind of thing. Google has turned into another monopoly trying to ward off competitors, and monopolies aren’t good for anyone.