T-Shirt Maker Claims He's "Gagged by Google"

[Pale_Rider]

http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3346461

A Southern California t-shirt company, which says its AdWords ads were rejected by Google, has accused the search company of stifling free speech.

The company, Y-Que, is known for politically incorrect and humorous t-shirts. At issue, according to owner Bill Wyatt's posts on the site, are the company's attempts to buy Google AdWords ads that point to its site, where it sells t-shirts criticizing President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and even one taking aim at Democratic challenger John Kerry.

...snip...

Wyatt posted a letter he says Google sent him, which says he must remove certain merchandise from his site to continue advertising with AdWords. The search company cited the following merchandise: "Recall Bush - White T-shirt (with radio control on head); Dumb and Dumber White T-shirt - Bush and Blair: The Movie; You're Fired - George W. Bush White T-shirt; Dump Cheney White T-shirt - "Halliburton" tattooed across head; Miserable Failure T-shirt - George W. Bush; Kerry sucks (too) - T-shirt."

Interestingly, the "Miserable Failure" t-shirt refers to a Google-centric incident in which anti-Bush Web activists conspired to create a "Google bomb." By linking the words "miserable failure" to Bush's biography on the White House Web site, they manipulated Google's search results so the biography was returned as a result when someone searched under those keywords.

Wonder if Google is doing the same for Ann Coulter books?

[benburch]

1. I wish him luck!

White Rose was "gagged" by google in the same manner several times until I found some carefully chosen adWords keywords that would get the traffic without offending the freeper who screens these things at Google.

[RhodaGrits]

2. I wish they provided a link to his site -

he'd probably double his business like Tom Bihn did. (I love my Tom Bihn laptop case VBG)