“Google Stole My Adsense”
Wednesday, 4th February 2009 by Alex Turnbull
Many people have tried to get their personal messages captured on Google Earth, but for whatever reason, most have failed - even when they knew the images were being taken.
On this basketball court in Australia however, someone has finally succeeded in having their message deliberately captured, and this time the message is a rather anti-Google one...
The message, which covers the entire court (you can see the shadows of the nets at either end), reads "Google stole my Adsense" - implying that whoever created these words is in some sort of dispute with Google over payments from their "contextual advertising solution", Google Adsense.
What isn't clear however, is who the person responsible is or, more importantly, whether or not Google will allow this image to remain visible.
We've seen many times that El Goog are happy to remove Street View images at the request of members of the public, but will they remove satellite or aerial images that are critical of their practices?
Thanks to Ella.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
How can anyone (outside of Google) know when Google is doing their images of any particular are, to time their message?
That’s a good question Joseph. Other than specific events which Google has pre-announced, the answer is really that people can’t tell.
The trajectories of the satellites involved are documented by their owners, but there’s no way of knowing which images Google will license.
The image in question here is an aerial photograph however, and although you might be able to find out when a local company was going to be flying overhead, you still wouldn’t be guaranteed that the images would get licensed.
Judging from the state of this message, I reckon the artist just left it like that for months on end – hoping that one day it might be seen!
I wonder if that person knows they made it on yet?
Ooh, you can Digg this story if you like: http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Google_Stole_My_Adsense_PIC
How long before Google removes the anti-google image?
I would be very surprised if they did.
Google won’t remove it. It’s FREE PR (even if it is claiming they stole an idea.) Good on him for trying to fight the big guns, but ultimately Google does win in the end. While we aren’t using Adsense to view the artist’s image, we are still using Google Earth…!