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When it comes to big businesses, everyone would agree Google and Bing are two competing giants. They compete for the attention of visitors, the attention of potential business customers, yet, in their attempt to be more politically correct then any other player on the market, or should we say.. more catholic then the pope, they both discriminate against any kind of business that goes against their cropped up policies.

Are Google’s or Bing’s policies fair and equidistant, as they keep repeating they are trying to make them be ? No, absolutely not, if your business happens to be on the wrong side of the political spectrum, or if you even show any kind of personal entrepreneurship and come up with a good business idea, Google will make sure, just like Bing, that you will not be able to advertise that idea on their ad platforms.

Let’s take some examples of bordering stupidity, and violating several commercial laws, including ones that state that no business should be allowed to interfere in any other business’s dealings with the intent of establishing, prohibiting from establishing, or in any other way preventing said business from achieving its business goals, as long as that business is legal.

Or in other words, Google and Bing should not be allowed to selectively allow or disallow *legal* businesses from advertising on their platforms. Please note, that I repeat this word *legal*, because Google and Bing frequently treat small businesses with *legal* rights to sell the products or services that these two platforms discriminate against, and it’s not Google’s problem or duty to establish whether a certain product, business practice, or modus operandi of a paying customer of their platform is or is not legal.

Once I own a business legally and I employ people and pay taxes, both platforms should be happy to take my money and allow me to advertise on them. But NO, they don’t do that, they discriminate against small businesses based on their (or someone from these two companies) shortsightedness, generalization, and sheer lack of knowledge about how different businesses operate in different countries, trying to force a one-world, one-size fits all model on all customers.

Let’s see the concrete examples.

First, an interesting petfood store example by the name of [url=https://xtart.eu/12014]Animax Pet Shop[/url]
I’ve been in business relationship with this company for years, and I can truthfully say that they are 1) legal 2) they do NOT sell the things (namely drugs) that Google says they sell, and it’s the reason this company is not allowed to have ads on Google Ads for.

This term, which in any normal person’s mind, simply means “animals to the max” or something along that line, to Google, seems to be a drug term, and they supposedly have it on a list of forbidden substances, that should be not allowed to be advertised. Now don’t get me wrong, I totally agree with the fact that drugs should not be allowed to be advertised, on the contrary, those should really be forbidden ! But as long as 1) what I am selling, or my company name in this case is LEGAL and is NOT what Google seems to think it is, then 2) Google should be the one not allowed to discriminate against me.

All my ads, for any product on the animax site have been disapproved one after the other, and a link to a list of forbidden substances appears as a reason for disapproval. The problem is, that list does NOT CONTAIN anything even resembling the term they are referring to (animax), since obviously it’s not a drug, but an actual pet store from Romania / Eastern Europe and possibly elsewhere.

I’ve requested a call with one of their specialist, and I’ve written *lengthy* explanations to anyone I could contact at Google, only to find deaf ears and blind eyes, noone that contacted me via email or phone from Google, could ever fix this issue. The people who did contact me with regard to this issue, all declined responsibility for the disapproval, then kept referring to higher and higher “legal departments” at Google, only to see that after several months since this happened, noone has contacted me with any actual, factual, real response from them. The ads are of course disapproved as of today, and even the account got suspended, for the same reason. A small amount of the sums that were in that specific adwords account at the moment of suspension got returned to the bank, after about 40 days from suspension, and nothing was heard of the issue again. The issue is still unresolved, however, because we’d still like to advertise the pet shop, and have google ads run to bring in visitors interested in these pet foods, accessories, etc.

For anyone still thinking that “animax” could be a drug-related term, please visit the site and see for yourselves that it’s not:
https://animax.ro/
It is sickening, that a giant like Google, is allowed to do so much harm, and not be made responsible for this discrimination.

Another blatant example of discrimation, is against small businesses in the service industry, like printer servicing, printer repairs, and similars.

I have a customer from India, that has a LEGAL BUSINESS IN THE UK, registered as Service And Supplies Ltd, in London ! Google blatantly discriminates against this company, not allowing their ads to run, always giving the same reasons: Disapproved – Third party consumer services – technical support.

Here are some of the ads that Google has disapproved, without appeal.

Now you may think that this could be ok, and I would say it’s ok, too, if it wasn’t for the fact that Google DOES ALLOW OTHER SIMILAR SITES to have ads, and those even get almost permanent display on search results

Here are some examples of ads running for the same vertical (printer support / fixing printing devices) , that Google DID allow in the same period in which aforementioned UK site’s ads were banned:

And there are countless similar examples. On some campaigns that I ran for MOVIES (DVDs for sale, to be more precise), I got the notice that some of them involve Russia, and are not allowed to run, on others, without any real reason, entire accounts were suspended, and asked shitloads of documentation forms to fill out, but wait, the forms don’t allow you to actually submit what you want, they ask you on those form some things that you simply cannot fill, for instance, if you happen to be an Indian citizen, Google has not heard of the possibility of you owning a business in the UK, and they won’t allow you to actually submit the UK company’s data, so you either falsely declare that you are not from India, or you can’t submit your UK business’s details.

Same thing happens on Bing, God forbid you trying to advertise your small business in any area, in any vertical, because, bham ! your ads are disapproved, but the same Bing has no problem with larger companies advertising with the exact same words as you tried to do, with the exact same services.

On some occasions, I was refused to add a payment method with a card issued by Revolut (you’ve heard of’em, right ? they are the new kids on the block and they’re here to stay!), on premise of card being prepaid, though it wasn’t a prepaid card.

Periodically, money just disappears from the account, without any clicks whatsoever, and then 10 days later you discover, you seemingly had clicks on those days, they just weren’t reported you know…

The examples could go on and on, but I believe this would suffice as evidence, that Google and Bing both blatantly discriminates against certain small businesses, while it promotes others without any shame. Is this part of cancel culture ? You bet it is ! And it’s high time someone at Google and someone at Bing gets questioned over it !