>>>> There is no huge anti-knife lobby to pander to.
Apparently, Google disagrees - otherwise why would they have restrictions on it? It is as political as the gun case.
>>>> If the mortgage crisis has taught us anything it's that big companies can get a pass for things that smaller companies wouldn't.
Bailing out a failing bank because it is (supposedly) better for the economy is not exactly the same as suspending advertisement rules or any other trade regulations.
Re:How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads
by retrogradeorbit on Monday March 25, 2013 @09:13PM
(#5440800)
Maybe it's the agency problem. The mid level manager making the decisions is not a shareholder.
Re:How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads
by redthrowaway on Monday March 25, 2013 @09:49PM
(#5440940)
>The mid level manager making the decisions is not a shareholder.
They almost certainly are.
That's something else entirely. There is an argument to be made that doing things like that could actually be good for the shareholders, if you assume that a majority of customers are pro- gun control and doing that could get you accolades from them instead of boycotts. Maybe the opposite is true in reality, but at least there is a plausible argument to be made that it could be profitable to take a stance on a political issue.
That doesn't seem to apply in this case. There is no huge anti-knife lobby to pander to. Refusing to sell knives or to associate with knife sellers doesn't get your company published in the liberal press in a positive way. It just gets everybody dumping on you for being an imperfect bureaucracy.
>And the government probably has absolutely nothing to do with it - if it were government-enforced, it would apply to Amazon too.
If the mortgage crisis has taught us anything it's that big companies can get a pass for things that smaller companies wouldn't.