Google flacks
From Google’s health advertising blog, urging the health care industry to react to filmmaker Michael Moore’s new film, “Sicko”: “We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message. We help you connect your company assets while helping users find the information they seek. If you are interested in learning more about issue management campaigns or about how we can help your company better connect its assets online, email us. We’d love to hear from you! Setting up these campaigns is easy. . . .”
Smelling a possible hoax, ZDNet’s “Between the Lines” investigated a little further, and determined that it is is in fact an “official” Google blog (if not official Google policy on health care information, as per Google Vice President Adam Bosworth’s own “officlal” Google blog). So apparently new PR hires get to make up their own “Googley” policy as they go along.)
Well, so much for Google as a public-spirited advocacy group, let alone a links-based, algorithm-driven search engine.
Update: Watch Google Health Advertising blogger Lauren Turner backpedalling as fast as she can. A really sad use of that English degree from Princeton, student presidency of the Princeton student bioethics forum, and Luce Scholarship. Given that most analysts are calling “Sicko” an overemphatic but not inaccurate depiction, you might call Lauren Turner’s story here “The Devil Wears Prada”— in reverse.
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