Jason Clarke

One year ago today, I published what has become one of the most popular posts on this blog:

Pumpkin carving tips

In which I ran through the 10 key steps to carving the perfect pumpkin for the season, including brilliant advice such as “Scoop right”. Take a peek before carving your own masterpiece this weekend.

Something just hit me…IMDB is the best and biggest movie & TV info website on earth. So whhhhhyyyy aren’t they leveraging their incredible content, community, and traffic by integrating at least *some* amount of social networking features? Seems like a huge lost opportunity here.

Just weeks after forcing a CafePress.com shopkeeper to stop selling t-shirts referencing their name, far-left liberal activist group MoveOn.org has struck again, this time successfully lobbying search giant Google to take down anti-MoveOn.org advertising which referencing the group’s recent attacks on Maine Senator Susan Collins.

Robert Cox broke the story in today’s DC Examiner, as he described the efforts of Senator Collins’ Internet director, Lance Dutson, to list the anti-MoveOn.org ads with Google:

Internet giant Google has banned advertisements critical of MoveOn.org, the far-left advocacy group that caused a national uproar last month when it received preferential treatment from The New York Times for its “General Betray Us” message.

The ads banned by Google were placed by a firm working for Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ re-election campaign. Collins is seeking her third term.

Earlier this week, Google told Lance Dutson, president of Maine Coast Designs, that the ads he placed for Collins had been removed and would not be allowed to resume because they violated Google’s trademark policy.

Google’s Web site states, “Google takes allegations of trademark infringement very seriously and, as a courtesy, we’re happy to investigate matters raised by trademark owners.” That suggests Google acted in response to a complaint by MoveOn.org.

As Cox notes (in my bolded emphasis), if I assume Google’s intentions as pure until proven evil, I can then only assume that they were contacted by MoveOn.org and pulled the ads in compliance. As far as I can tell, that’s the only way to explain why literally thousands of other ads with trademark “violations” remain on Google searches, including this one for “Blackwater”, also the name of a private security firm whose recent actions in Iraq have come under scrutiny.

Unless, of course, Google is quicker to support its political allies in their efforts to crush dissent via questionable trademark law?

Lance has more, including a chat transcript with a Google rep. And of course, this story will blossom as the various parties at fault work diligently to cover it up. Stay tuned!

Disclosure: I occasionally partner with Lance on various projects.