Google thinks that my article on Kegel Exercises makes the Also Sprach Zamolxis blog unsuitable for AdSense because of mature / adult / pornographic content. I am mad as hell.

BlogIdol explains mostly why this makes (again!) no sense and why having ads on sites like mine should be good for Google. I thought I explain here why I display AdSense even though I am making very little or no money.

After all, AdSense pays next to nothing, especially when considering that a man has to have choices, as Woody Harrelson told us in Natural Born Killers (Unrated Director's Cut Blu-ray). Alright, the clip doesn’t match the quote because I could not find it, but I talked about paid articles si prostii AdSense and the (ir)relevance of the Romanian online market; I even gave an example of ad offer for another blog which should clearly spell out why, but Google is not helping me to find it right now.

As stated on numerous occasions (mare-concurs-mare), I’d rather have others’ ads. (I even tried to encourage good, likeable comments.) Since I have yet to receive an acceptable proposal, I keep AdSense with my own ID. Here’s why:

1. I’d rather not have purist-communist readers, who believe that No Ads is a sign of noblesse / superiority. Having even a few ads is symbolic in that if I ever really decide to “go pro”, I’m not going to have major changes in readership just because of ads.
2. Ads send a positive signal to potential serious advertisers giving them an idea of what this would look like and are proof that I myself am not part of the crowd mentioned at 1).
3. Being part of AdSense gives me valuable information on how this works should I ever need to use AdWords (i.e., advertise) myself.
4. I honestly think it’s a way of repaying Google. I use their free services and I think they are a market leader. Since ads (and not NSA, apparently ) are their primary money maker, by running ads on my sites I contribute to the variety of their network and give them additional opportunities to make money – a win-win situation. Though my contribution to their revenue stream is hardly significant in aggregate, it is commensurate to my use of their resources they make available for free and I consider it a qui pro quo. In particular, if my site would suddenly become popular (it’s not that impossible, really), it would cause an undue use of bandwidth and CPU which would be freeloading, unless I am also running AdSense, which would allow Google to benefit along with me and in tandem with my use of their resources.

In short, I don’t run AdSense ads to help Google but more so to satisfy my ethical qualms of nothing is free, nor should it be. What would really make me (and probably Google and others) happy would be the ability to run AdSense and to donate all profits to a charity of my choice (such as EFF, EPIC or Kiva). Google would display a logo on my site – AdSense donor of x% to EFF and that would be a badge of honour that would help to

1. eliminate suspicions that I would (or ever had) clicked on my own ads or tried to defraud them in any way
2. make me happy because I would finally have a stronger motivator than making $10/month
3. would probably make visitors less likely to use ad blocking, more likely to click on ads they find interesting and less likely to mass click on ads for competitive reasons (i.e., to get me banned)
4. give soul to the morally empty, commercial endeavour of making money through advertising

So what is there to do? If ads were displayed only on the site, I could easily block them for the particular article with a bit of JavaScript/CSS in the template. Unfortunately, the link they sent me is for the mobile version of the page (and, by the way, that was refused by their “you’re wrong” page).

Din pacate, par a fi ramas prea putini inovatori la Google. N-ai cu cine, ba, n-ai cu cine..

LE: I've decided. Unless I hear from Big Baby G in Da Haus that my content is fine by the end of today (highly unlikely, I know), I'll be removing AdSense from all my sites. There really is no point in playing this cat & mouse game. Even if I were to password protect that article, they'd find another one similar, as they threatened in the letter. As we say in Romanian: dragoste cu de-a sula nu se poate. So goodbye, AdSense, it's been nice knowing you. If there's anyone interested in placing free ads here, you have the rules explained in the FAQ. I’ve already contacted Chitika, as hopefully they are more free-speech-friendly.

Sources / More info: biro