Sunday, November 12, 2006

Google "No Show" for Veterans Day

I have to admit that I made no post yesterday for Veterans Day, not because I meant not to honor them, but because November 11 is my wedding anniversary and I wasn't online much at all. To that end, I would like to say that I honor and respect all veterans on November 11 and every day. My 80-year-old father is a veteran of three wars (World War II, Korea, Vietnam) and every year I grow more awe-struck at the maturity and courage shown by him and other vets by serving our country.

Well, better late than never, I suppose. Never applies to Google, which, evidently doesn't honor Veterans Day or Memorial Day, for that matter.

The dominant search engine in the world marks special occasions including Halloween, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday, the Persian New Year, the birthday of Percival Lowell, the Lunar New Year, the 250th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Louis Braille's birthday – all celebrated already this year with special graphics and colors.

But for the 8th year in a row, Google has made no effort to commemorate any holiday honoring U.S. veterans or war dead – no tributes to Veterans Day or Memorial Day.

This seems to be a U.S. phenomenon only. Google's search engines for Canada does have graphics recognizing Remembrance Day, Canada's version of Veterans Day.

Why would Google dis Veterans Day? I guess its left-leaning politics might explain it.
--Rejecting an ad for a book critical of Bill and Hillary Clinton while continuing to accept anti-Bush themes
--Rejecting ads critical of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., while continuing to run attack ads against besieged House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.
--Allowing the communist Chinese government to have the search engine block "objectionable" search terms such as "democracy."

The main reason I bring up this Google thing is because of stories like this one from left-leaning sources (like F.A.I.R. and Media Matters), which seem to think advertisers shouldn't be allowed to determine which programs their advertising promotes.

I discussed the Air America blacklist flap in this post a few days ago and stated that advertisers are free to advertise--or not--on any program they desire to and that such decisions can be based as much on audience demographics and popularity as political philosophies.

Because I don't think advertisers should be forced to advertise on radio shows that no one listens to, I can't get overly worked up about Google's liberal bias. It is their business, after all, and just because Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave the maximum legal limit of donations to Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry and to primary candidate Howard Dean doesn't mean Google isn't a good search engine. So, while I am disappointed that Google is less than patriotic where our vets are concerned, I'll still use their search engine. But I probably won't click on the ads (not that I do, anyway).