Google "disapproves" net neutrality ad

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat net>
> Date: October 24, 2009 16:23:04 EDT
> To: dave () farber net, Ip ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
> Subject: Google "disapproves" net neutrality ad

> Dave, and everyone:
>
> Several months ago, I noticed that when one typed the phrase  
> "network neutrality" into Google's search engine, the top listed  
> results all advocated Google's regulatory agenda. In fact, Google  
> was contributing free advertising to groups which advocated "network  
> neutrality" regulation (see http://www.google.com/grants/). This  
> gave them an unfair advantage. They could place very high "bids" but  
> not be charged for them, so their ads were guaranteed to show up on  
> Google's result pages whereas paid ads might not.
>
> I therefore created a simple advertisement, using Google's "AdWords"  
> facility, which pointed to a white paper I had written on the issue.  
> This white paper advocated regulation only in instances of  
> anticompetitive practices or market failure, and recommended that  
> content and application providers (including Google) who could serve  
> as gatekeepers be scrutinized for anti-consumer practices as well as  
> ISPs. (You can see the paper at
>
> http://www.brettglass.com/principles.pdf
>
> on my Web site.)
>
> Then, on the morning of the FCC's vote on a Notice of Proposed Rule  
> Making on "network neutrality" regulation, I received the following  
> notice from Google:
>
> > Subject: Your Google AdWords Approval Status
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords. After reviewing your
> > account, we've found that one or more of your ads or keywords doesn't
> > meet our guidelines.
>
> I entered Google's Web interface, and discovered that -- during the  
> days before today's FCC meeting -- the ad had received large numbers  
> of clickthroughs. This number dropped to zero, of course, when  
> Google blocked the ad.
>
> I further discovered that the supposed "reason" for blocking the ad  
> was given as "Destination URL not working." So, I checked the Web  
> server and its logs. I discovered that in fact the server had been  
> working perfectly. What's more, according to the log, Google's  
> "bots" had visited the URL of the document twice less than 24 hours  
> before and had issued conditional "GET" requests. Each received a  
> "304" response (meaning that the page was present and had not been  
> recently changed). The log entries looked like this:
>
> crawl-66-249-67-74.googlebot.com - - [21/Oct/2009:10:49:45 -0600]  
> "GET /principles.pdf HTTP/1.1" 304 0 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible;  
> Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
>
> rate-limited-proxy-209-85-238-139.google.com - - [21/Oct/ 
> 2009:21:21:53 -0600] "GET /principles.pdf HTTP/1.1" 304 0 "-" "
> AdsBot-Google (+http://www.google.com/adsbot.html)"
>
> Google's statistics for the ad showed that after it had received  
> these POSITIVE responses, the clickthrough rate dropped to zero as  
> Google dropped the ad.
>
> I immediately resubmitted the ad to Google's advertising system, and  
> at first the site said that the ad was "pending review." When I  
> checked later, Google's site said that it had again rejected the ad  
> again because its destination URL was supposedly "unreachable," even  
> though Google's "bots" had made two more successful visits to the  
> document since that time:
>
> crawl-66-249-67-74.googlebot.com - - [22/Oct/2009:16:15:09 -0600]  
> "GET /principles.pdf HTTP/1.1" 200 31639 "-" "Mozilla/
> 5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
>
> rate-limited-proxy-209-85-238-139.google.com - - [23/Oct/ 
> 2009:00:55:13 -0600] "GET /principles.pdf HTTP/1.1" 200 31639 "
> -" "AdsBot-Google (+http://www.google.com/adsbot.html)"
>
> I have resubmitted the ad a third time, and at this writing it is  
> still "pending approval" and is not appearing.
>
> In the meantime, other ads, pointing to other pages on the same  
> group of servers, have continued to be active. Only the one ad  
> pointing to the paper regarding "network neutrality" regulation --  
> which advocates that content and application providers be  
> scrutinized to the same extent as ISPs for anti-consumer behavior --  
> is blocked.
>
> It is noteworthy that Google has advocated that "network neutrality"  
> regulation be applied to ISPs such as myself (even though we have  
> not ever censored legal content), but at the same time has advocated  
> that it not be subject to such regulations, even though it serves as  
> a gatekeeper itself. It has even had this change written into the  
> rules proposed in the NPRM released by the FCC on Thursday.
>
> I will leave inferences from these events to the reader.
>
> --Brett Glass



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