After Post, Google Zaps GPS Jammer Ads

While researching a What's Brewin' item I posted this week on backups to the GPS system, I conducted a Google search on GPS jammers. The results of the search staggered me -- by both the number of hits and the fact that Google also carried ads for gizmos that have no legitimate use.

I don't know why anyone would need a $49 GPS jammer that plugs into a car cigarette lighter outlet, except maybe to evade being tracked by the police. In a worst case scenario, a GPS jammer could cause a plane to go off course and crash.

Taking ads for the jammers does not seem to fit in with Google's slogan, "Do no harm." So, I sent Jim Young, Google's Defense Department sales manager, a note at about 7 pm EDT on Monday asking him what the company's policy was on accepting ads for these nefarious devices, most of which seem to be hatched in China, a country that Google has had a tiff with lately.

At 3:42 pm EDT on Tuesday, I received an e-mail from Deanna Yick, who works in Google's public relations department, which said that ads for GPS jammers violate the company's policy that prohibits the promotion of hacking and similar tools.

In a follow-up e-mail, Yick added:

Ads that violate the policy will be disapproved. We're constantly using both automated and manual means to monitor the system, so please let us know if there are additional ads you're seeing for these products on Google.com.

I did a search for GPS jammers at 10 pm EDT Tuesday night, and all the ads for GPS jammers that had popped on searches earlier in the day had disappeared.

But I think Google needs to tweak the algorithm that zapped ads for GPS jammers, because a search this morning resulted in an ad for a company selling GPS blocking gear and a search for GPS jamming came back with ads for GPS jamming equipment.

Kudos to Google for such a fast response, even though the search engine still returns multiple results for GPS jammer Web pages. But that's a free speech issue I'll have live with.