Google Showing Checkout Icons For House Ads

Google is doing something that can only be described as dishonest. Google has been showing little (and sometimes not-so-little) Google Checkout icons in ads bought by advertisers who are using the system, which is whatever, their prerogative to do to promote their own service. What I don’t like is Google now using the Checkout icon, obviously designed to draw attention to an ad (and not provide a benefit for the user) to their own house ads:

As you can see in the image above, Google put the li’l shopping cart icon next to a Google Video ad (which you can see makes no mention of selling anything anyway, making it irrelevant). Now, Google Video may or may not use Google Checkout*, but I know one service that doesn’t use it: Google Analytics. That didn’t stop Amit Agarwal from finding an ad for Analytics that contained […]

Original post by Nathan Weinberg