Awhile back, I had an issue with Google Adsense. Lots of bloggers have had this trouble because Google seems to think that sites like BlogExplosion, BlogMad and Blogsoldiers are in violation of their policies even though I’ve seen statements by BlogMad stating the contrary. As any of you know who have tried to get adsense re-instated, Google sends out these form letters (they only seem to be sent by a real person because everyone gets the same letter) and makes no effort to understand that you have taken a look at your stats and see no invalid clicks.

Well, Google’s Adwords has similar problems. Adwords is the flip side of Adsense. They have rules for Adwords where certain words are not allowed. A sex columnist who writes for the San Francisco Chronicle gives an interesting overview of what Google deems inappropriate in spite of the protests from companies who use adwords. Apparently words such as dyke and transgender terms (used by the transgender community) are banned by Google for silly reasons. The reason cited in the article is that these terms are “teen porn concepts.” What? Since when? Also, when did Google get to be big brother of the internet? Did I miss something?

The last part of the article really gives the crux of the issue. Adwords doesn’t have a blacklist of words in its policy. This means that the allowable terms are truly subject to the whim of whomever is approving ads that day or whomever your ads get approved by. Companies using adwords also report problems with responses from Google, very similar to the experience I had.

My opinion is that Google is worse than Microsoft. Nearly every computer geek loves to hate Microsoft, but really they should be watching Google as it grows more and more powerful. I see very little stopping Google and the way it does business.