SiliconBeat

I don’t mind saying that on this election day, I find myself worried more about the outcome of the voting for Proposition 8 than the national election. As most folks know, Prop. 8 would ban gay marriage in California. It appears to have a good shot of winning, which I find to be horribly depressing.

My despair of that is compounded by the fact that I absolutely detest the whole system of proposition voting in this state. It’s a waste of money, and way too confusing for the average folks. Not because they are dumb, but simply because the issues are too complex and most of us don’t really have the time to research them deeply to make informed choices. Instead, we’re subjected to misleading ads and have to hope for the best.

So, all that said, I was even more outraged on Monday when I discovered that I had become a proponent of Prop. 8 against my will. How? On a project I run called The Next Newsroom Project, there is a box on the right for Google’s AdSense. On Monday, supporters of Yes on Prop. 8 apparently dumped massive amounts of money into buying ads through AdSense Google’s AdWords, and as a result, virtually took over the whole network for a day. Things have returned to normal today.

The result was that all day, anyone visiting my site saw a big “Yes on Prop. 8″ ad. And it wasn’t just me. Across the Internet, folks using AdSense experienced the same thing. Read the rest of this entry »

When Google reported its earnings a couple of weeks ago, a lot of people who didn’t pay close attention hailed the results as a sign that the company had truly created a transcendent business model. I even heard people invoke the term “New Economy.” Funny, because when I start hearing that term, I figure trouble lies ahead.

In fact, if you parsed what Google said in its results, a lot of its profit increase came from cost savings and paring back its torrid hiring pace. Hardly the stuff of a “new economy.”

But I’m wondering now if there’s even more trouble brewing based on an email I received today about AdSense.

Read the rest of this entry »