Google kills 'eco' search engine
24 Apr 2008 | 06:16 BST
Planting trees breaks the rules
A GREEN SEARCH engine outfit Down Under has attracted the wrath of the 'don't do evil' company Google.
Ecocho.com.au promises to plant two trees for every 1,000 searches that are made on the site and users can search through either Yahoo or Google. Google and Yahoo adverts appear next to search results.
While this might be all well and good, The Sydney Morning Herald points out that all is not great in Ecocho land. The brains behind the outfit is Tim Macdonald who also founded a company called Found Agency. This outfit has been attacked by Google for tinkering with its rankings.
Now, Google wants to see Macdonald's new search engine off because it is breaking its Adsense rules.
It is written in the book of Google that publishers running its advertising shalt not "compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or promise compensation to a third party for such behaviour".
Apparently promising to plant trees breaks those rules and Google has stopped serving adverts to the eco search engine. µ
L'Inq
Sydney
Morning Herald
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