I just saw Sicko yesterday. I then found this blog post today. I’m not so sure that the people at Google selling ads to the healthcare industry should be commenting on this at all. It’s a pretty murky water they are wading into here not to mention the unseemly and blatant selling nature of the post. I expect better from Google.
Good news for the poor beleagured health insurance and pharma companies though because, “…companies come to us hoping we can help them better manage their reputations through “Get the Facts” or issue management campaigns. Your brand or corporate site may already have these informational assets, but can users easily find them?”
Gosh, what to do. Instead of fixing the real problem, they can help you, “…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’s assets while helping users find the information they seek.”
As long as people think everything is ok, then it must be, right? Google can help promote your message. (whether it’s true or not)
Not only is the blog a blatant advertisement itself, there is no place to leave a comment telling them politely that I find this tactic unseemly and I thought Google was better than that.
Will the loss of innocence never stop?
The Image Lab 
Life is a never-ending loss of innocence. That is, unless you decided to jettison all expectations that people will “do the right thing.” That’s where I’ve ended up, and I can’t say that it’s any better than a string of disappointments. Sure, they are occasionally replaced with an “unexpected surprise,” but in the end it leads to a distinct and pervasive distrust of humans.
Which is fine if you dig being a curmudgeonly recluse (like me), but can be very lonely and depressing if you aren’t psychologically prepared for it.
At least the lows aren’t very low 🙂
chica – i feel you on all counts!! i hope you made something beautiful yesterday too?
In their defense, the don’t appear to be editing all the negative articles about this in the trackbacks on that post. It’s google’s new slogan – Maybe be kinda evil… but do let everybody talk about it…
Also a correction. You can sort of leave a comment. You can leave a link to a blog post about the blog post. (How meta) You must have a blogger account to do this and set up a blog (even if you have no content for that blog) and then you can add the link to the post. So they have comments in a unique way.