Google Bans Ads For Essay-Writing Services

llamapalooza writes "Google announced that it will ban essay writing firms from advertising on their site. (The prevalence of cheating on campuses has been discussed here before.) While universities have welcomed the move, the affected firms are claiming it will 'punish legitimate businesses.' Google has specifically banned 'academic paper-writing services and the sale of pre-written essays, theses, and dissertations,' which now join other items on the banned list such as tobacco, drugs, weapons, and prostitution."

Banned list?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

which now join other items on the banned list such as tobacco, drugs, weapons, and prostitution."

Depends on the drug [google.com]

Anyway, who really cares who Google accepts for advertising - its what they index that really matters.

Re:

[mrmeval]

Agreed. If I want it I should be able to search for it.

Re:Banned list?

[1u3hr]

Agreed. If I want it I should be able to search for it.

You can still search, and find whatever you want. What they're doing is not seving ads for these products when you search for a related term.

Re:

[user24]

My first response to the headline was "thank god" - I post copies of my essays online, and I hate having cheat sites advertised next to my hard-written essays. Not only is (was) it insulting to students who work for their degrees, but it also cheapened my site by aligning it with those types of services.

Whenever someone says drug in that context

[Sycraft-fu]

It is safe to assume that "illegal" is implied. Banning ALL drug advertising would be rather odd in most cases. Remember: Even simple things like aspirin are drugs. It's no surprise Google is happy to accept money for advertising legal drugs.

...And happen to be illegal "too"...

[DrYak]

It is safe to assume that "illegal" is implied. Banning ALL drug advertising would be rather odd in most cases.

Depends on the juridiction.

Remember: Even simple things like aspirin are drugs.

And here in Switzerland, it is illegal to advertise for it.
A drug company can advertise its brand name (As in "Here in Mepha we make generics and thus are cheaper than concurrence !")
A drug company may indirectly infer that it does produces drugs against some problem ("Having sexual troubles ? You shoul talk about them w

Re:

[CastrTroy]

I think in the US it works like this. You can advertise a drug. But if you want to advertise what it actually does, you have to list out all the side effects, along with a bunch of other information. This is why many magazines have drug ads, followed by a full page of fine print with all the stuff they are legally required to have. Or you get the ads that just say the name brand, without actually saying what they do. This works well for things that are already well known, like Tylenol, and Advil.

Re:

[freeweed]

I'm not a hippie saying that drugs bring more problems than they solve

That's probably the last thing I'd expect a hippie to say. ;)

Medical point of view

[DrYak]

"Eat Prozac ! It will make you suicidal!!"
Personal experience FTW :)

Fluoxetin the ative stuff in Prozac, as well as other "selective seretonie-reuptake inhibitors", has a complex (and slow) dynamics.
Depression, in an oversimplified way, can be said to have 2 interesting characteristics : it makes one very negative. But it also removes most will power (the patient becomes apathic and doesn't do anything apart maybe occasionally complaining).
Again in an oversimplified way, SSRI-class drugs will have a faster

Re:

[jellomizer]

Well the problem is google has the motto "Dont be Evil" where evil is sometimes a relative term. tobacco, illegal drugs, weapons, and prostitution, and now cheating. So google is under a lot of stress to be profitable but yet try to do the right thing. But to the most part I think this is news because it shows that some people are starting to fight online cheating. which is more prevalent then we would like to think, it also causes major problems.

It further devalues recent student for employment, not only

Re:

[lgw]

It's odd: I don't consider tobacco, drugs, weapons, prostitution, or cheating to be "evil" (the latter is pathetic, perhaps), which forces me to think of Google as "evil" for imposing their morality through their service. Just another church that's sure what's good for me.

Re:

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

What is the difference between not advertising certain pages and not letting Chinese search up certain pages?

Not comparable. One still allows you to find something, the other does not.

Google should never have gone into China, it makes do-no-evil-initiatives like this (where they refuse to accept money from certain companies considered by many to be unethical) look stupid.

Re:Banned list?

[Yvanhoe]

The main difference is that most people would enjoy seeing all ads censored and no pages unindexed.

Re:Banned list?

[Brianech]

This isn't the same though. Ads are censored everywhere else, why should google not have the option? So you think google should serve tobacco ads that may encourage youth to smoke? There is a reason some ads are banned from tv/radio/public billboards. Like everyone is saying. They aren't censoring the web, they are merely selecting who they wish to allow to advertise with them, which is their right. This isn't about free speech or anything like that.

Re:

[ChronoFish]

While I agree with your position, and that of Google's right to refuse advertising dollars, there is one little sticky point:

Googles intermingle top placement ads with the top search results. While they are subtly different, top placement ads often times look like search results.

But on the flip side. Who says Google must index the entire Internet? Who says they must display search results? Who says they can't filter? Sure Google is the de-facto search engine, but it's not a public utility.

-CF

Re:

[1u3hr]

The main difference is that most people would enjoy seeing all ads censored and no pages unindexed.

Actually, I think a lot of people wish those robbotically-created pages that pollute the results pages weren't indexed. Crap like all the dozens of clones of Wikipedia with added advertisements; pseudo-search pages that have no actual information, not to mention those full of popups and exploits. Sometimes it takes a dozen tries before I work out a search that actually finds the thing I want, and not a viag

Don't Be Evil

[Nymz]

Is that "do no evil" or "Do KNOW EVIL!"? did anyone get this in writing or has this whole slogan thing been word of mouth?

Actually, it's "Don't be evil" from their CoC. [google.com] And I imagine their decision to refuse this type of advertising is, in their opinion, the lesser of two evils.

Re:

[simm1701]

I think its just progress a letter

Don't B evil

to

Don't C evil

Obviously it doesn't count if they can hide it, or not notice it

The Difference

[Nymz]

Ok so this is an extreme over-simplification... What is the difference between not advertising certain pages and not letting Chinese search up certain pages?

The difference is you are free to choose another search engine, other than the family-friendly Google. Where as the people living under the CCP [wikipedia.org] have no such freedom to information, and no choice.

Re:

[iamacat]

Well, if a TV anchor dedicated his program to images like this, he would be promptly fired due to viewers boycotting the channel and advertisers pulling their business from the "unpatriotic" company. If we want to be exposed to unpopular views on war in mass media, perhaps we shouldn't fire decent radio DJs who occasionally quote rap music with unpopular racial stereotypes.

Offensive Speech

[Nymz]

If we want to be exposed to unpopular views on war in mass media, perhaps we shouldn't fire decent radio DJs who occasionally quote rap music with unpopular racial stereotypes.

I am soooooo offended by your suggestion. I DEMAND AN APOLOGY!!!

Distinction

[gowen]

'punish legitimate businesses.'

Legitimate is not the same as legal. Besides, google can take advertising (or not) from whoever they like.

It's not illegal, though

[Moraelin]

First of all, I don't think selling papers is _illegal_, though. Unethical, yes, but then lots of unethical things pass for normal and legal business these days. (And it was even worse in the past.) So _if_ your implication is, basically, "they may be legitimate, but they're not legal", I'll have to disaggree there. They're against university rules, but AFAIK not against any state or federal laws. If they were illegal, you wouldn't need Google to do that, you could just forward those links to the police.

Second, legitimate is even trickier. Where do you draw the line? Technically speaking, anything legal _is_ a legitimate business. If you don't want it done, just pass a law to outlaw it.

And the business side pops up all the time (e.g, "but it creates employment!") when debating whether or not to make something illegal. It sure popped up in the spam and telemarketting debates, for example, all the way to the highest level. So basically when deciding whether it's legal or not, some MPs/congressmen/whatever-you-have, already considered the business side of it, and whether or not they want businesses doing that. E.g., whether the (lack of) ethics of it outweigh the employment created, tax income, and/or bribes from that lobby. In a way they already decided if that kind of business is legitimate or not.

Employment vs inflation is a constant concern since the Great Depression, when basically suddenly supply outstripped aggregate demand. (Yes, Say's Law does still apply, but "supply creates its own demand" only by lowering prices, and in the Great Depression suddenly the only point where you could actually sell all that stuff was below the production costs.) This became even worse when most industry moved offshore. Now we need even less people producing stuff. What do you do with the rest? Leave them unemployed, like in the 19'th century? Well, that also lowers the money they can spend to buy stuff, and that-a-way lies the downwards spiral that led to the Great Depression in the first place.

So nowadays governments actually get to see that employment stays roughly where they want it, and create some extra aggregate demand. (Deficit spending, pork barrel, social security, etc.) It works too, since we no longer have the economic crisis cycles that plagued most of the 19'th century and the first part of the 20'th century. Back then it was considered _normal_ that the industry goes through bankruptcy cycles and rises from the ashes based on demanding even longer work hours and lower salaries.

In a nutshell, a government's job is to see to it that you encourage (or at least don't discourage too much) people to create more jobs that don't actually produce something. Pretend to manage each other, create whole castes of marketters just trying to steal customers from each other, or do all sorts of convenience services to each other. And chip in a little to make it all keep working. Deserved or undeserved, ethical or unethical, as long as the negative impact is small enough, it doesn't matter. It matters that unemployment doesn't get out of hand. Because noone wants another Great Depression.

That's why even when debating something as annoying as telemarketting, the question just _has_ to pop up, basically, "how many jobs _are_ we nuking in the process? and can the rest of the economy absorb those?" You don't want to be the paladin in shiny armour that saved people from all evils... at the expense of causing the economy to collapse.

At any rate, that's why a lot of unproductive and even mildly unethical stuff is allowed to exist. In fact, encouraged to exist.

If you think that such companies are crossing the line into outright harmful, well, just lobby your lawmakers to outlaw it.

But, yeah, I'll aggree that Google is free to choose the companies it does business with.

Re:

[Mr2001]

Where do you draw the line? Technically speaking, anything legal _is_ a legitimate business. If you don't want it done, just pass a law to outlaw it.

That's exactly what the GP was disputing, I think. He's saying that these businesses might be legal, but that doesn't make them "legitimate".

But you're right: where do you draw the line? "Legitimate" just means a business that you approve of. Are payday loan shops legitimate businesses? How about telemarketers, pawn shops, or casinos? Head shops? Porn shops? They're all legal, but whether the GP would call them "legitimate" is up to him.. and it's a pointless argument anyway.

Frankly, if Google is going to

Re:

[Znork]

"Unethical, yes, but then lots of unethical things pass for normal and legal business these days."

I'd even question wether it's unethical. Embarrasing, yes, and telling, sure.

But unethical? If essays and theses are so easily manufactured, replicated and/or forged, perhaps it's time to reconsider the methods by which such academic achievements are evaluated.

Perhaps we should exercise some cross-discipline teamwork and have engineering and research students team up with technical writers and humanist (english

Re:

[westlake]

I'd even question wether it's unethical. Embarrasing, yes, and telling, sure.
But unethical? If essays and theses are so easily manufactured, replicated and/or forged, perhaps it's time to reconsider the methods by which such academic achievements are evaluated.

The world still demands an occassional demonstration that you can be trusted to follow instructions, complete assignments, take pride in your own work. You won't always have a team to back you up. Particularly when you have got into the habit of le

Re:

[rtb61]

Or more to the point, shouldn't poor working university students have the same access to essay writing services that the children of the rich and greedy have. Problems with essays, focus on exams for grading results.

It is typical of googles BA mono culture, this is more important than advertising gambling, alcohol, or smoking to children. Other things are also troubling, like advertising competing services on your web site, or in terms of politics, advertising republicans on democratic web sites.

It seem

Re:

[dunelin]

Actually in Massachusetts, it is illegal to sell papers like this:

• Mass. General Laws, Chapter 271, Section 50. Sale of research papers, etc. and taking of examinations for another at educational institutions. Whoever, alone or in concert with others, sells to another, or arranges for or assists in such sale for another, a theme, term paper, thesis or other paper or the written results of research, knowing or having reason to know that such theme, term paper, thesis or other paper or research results or su

Re:It's not illegal, though

[Moraelin]

Forging an official document be illegal, but cheating isn't. I dont think anyone got throw in jail for being caught cheating at an exam. Or do you know of any actual case where that happened?

Heck, I even know of people who forged or lied about their diploma, and still didn't land in jail. E.g., there was this story on Slashdot about the, IIRC, admission officer at MIT, who not only claimed diplomas from universities she never went to or which didn't even offer that qualification, but went on to actively undermine the whole idea of academic achievement and integrity. They fired her, but that's pretty much all they can possibly do. You can't throw someone in jail for merely being a pathological liar, or we'd have to build jails for all the politicians and marketters and PR hacks, plus about half the journalists.

College rules are one thing, laws are another. Something may be forbidden by the college rules, yet perfectly legal as far as a court of law is concerned.

Cheating is just inherently unethical and for most of us abhorrent, but, as I was saying, a lot of stuff that I find unethical and abhorrent is legal anyway. And unless someone actually manages to make it illegal, like it or not, it _is_ a legitimate business.

Now noone says you or Google should do business with them. But they are legitimate, no matter how much some of us think they shouldn't be.

Re:

[Arancaytar]

I haven't got the foggiest idea of what laws apply in this case, but when you hand in an exam or essay, aren't you asserting that what you submitted is entirely your work? I know I had to sign a statement to that effect when I handed in my final assignment last week.

This is not like selling RPG gold or violating a site's Terms of Service. This sounds more like a deliberate deception for personal gain, to paraphrase Wikipedia on Fraud.

Re:

[Shados]

Something may be forbidden by the college rules, yet perfectly legal as far as a court of law is concerned

Of course, a very large amount of reputable colleges make student sign legally binding contracts stating the student agrees not to cheat, and breaking contracts tend to be something you can be pulled in court for. I can't say I know an instance where that was used, but its there in quite a few colleges.

Re:

[starwed]

That's an interesting *sigh* you have there. It managed to convince me that ligitimate is not, in fact, the same as legal, since the second definition linked to is "in accordance with established rules, principles, or standards."

I'm a bit uncertain of your intention, but thanks anyway. :)

Not keen on this

[m0nkyman]

Nope, I like my dictionaries to have the word 'fuck' in them, my phone books to list escort agencies, and my search engines to not set moral standards.

I'm aware that this is only on the paid-for part of the business. I still don't like it. If it's legal, they should allow it. It calls into question whether they're putting their morality into the rest of their business.

Re:Not keen on this

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

If it's legal, they should allow it.

In what jurisdiction?

Prosititution is illegal in many parts of the land of the (hah!) free. Alchohol is illegal in some Middle Eastern countries. Drugs have different laws almost everywhere. Codeine is illegal in Greece (IIRC), Marijuana semi-legal in some countries, etc etc.

Re:

[m0nkyman]

What Jurisdiction?

1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

That'd be their corporate HQ. Next question?

Re:Not keen on this

[koreth]

It calls into question whether they're putting their morality into the rest of their business.

This is a company whose motto is "Don't be evil." If you are just now questioning whether or not they're putting their morality into their business, you have not been paying any attention at all.

Whether you agree with their morality or not, or agree that the particular decisions they've made are consistent with their openly stated (hell, vigorously publicized) moral code, are other questions entirely. But they have been very clear from day one that morality plays a central role in their business decisions.

Personally I think "Don't promote businesses which serve no purpose other than helping students cheat on their schoolwork" is entirely consistent with "Don't be evil."

Re:

[rumith]

I don't want to sound offensive, but when Google makes a decision in favor of business, everybody says "So you're evil after all; no love for Google!", and now that they've done something in favor of morality, people start ranting about that, too? I guess one cannot please all geeks simultaneously.

Re:

[franksands]

Please, pay attention: they are not blocking search results. They are blocking ads that consist of "essay writing".

Re:

[gatzke]

What a slippery slope.

No prostitution, but what about "legit" escort services and massage parlors?

Maybe "singles only" or "informal hookup" sites?

No term papers, what about Cliff's notes? Homework help?

"Guns are bad" so no more ads or links to gun sites?

Smoking is bad for you and those around you, why not ban smoking sites and ads?

SUVs use gas, gas makes CO2, CO2 is killing us, so no more car ads.

Hamburgers come from cows, cow ranching causes deforestation, no more meat related anything in the search engin

Re:

[Oligonicella]

Very simple. Write your own.

Re:

[dubl-u]

I'm aware that this is only on the paid-for part of the business. I still don't like it. If it's legal, they should allow it. It calls into question whether they're putting their morality into the rest of their business.

Their motto is "Don't be evil". Of course they're putting their morality into the rest of their business.

To my mind, that's been pretty good so far. This is one example that I like; there is no point to academic essay-writing services except to benefit individual students with money while ha

Actually, now that you mention it...

[Moraelin]

Prostitution I have nothing against, however neither do I think it should be thrown in our faces the whole time (ok, I'm not a big fan of ads at all).

Actually, now that you mention it, I'd rather have more prostitution ads than some of the other scams I'm bombarded with.

E.g., you almost can't go to a page that's even remotely game/gold/whatever related, without getting powerlevelling and gold farming ads nowadays. Not only that kind of cheating actively disrupts the game for everyone else, but in most cases

This comment would be funnier...

[simplerThanPossible]

if I could have found those services.

Bender Says. . .

[Apple Acolyte]

"I'll create my own search engine, with blackjack and hookers" and essay writers.

dickens was paid by the word

[User 956]

which now join other items on the banned list such as tobacco, drugs, weapons, and prostitution.

Essay writing is just a simpler form of prostitution. You know the old saying "Prose before Hos".

Re:

[mobby_6kl]

What are you paying to get your assignmetns done [schrankmonster.de]?

Legitimate Businesses

[Anonymous Coward]

These are legitimate [legit-site.com] businesses, but that does not mean that Google has to display their ads.

Google can choose to display or not to display any ads they want. The supreme court has found many times that the right to not speak is equally as important as freedom of speech.

Thank God!

[GregPK]

While I've never cheated. It's hard enough being an honest college student nowdays. Searching the web for research on topics and having that constant reminder pop up in your face. You can bypass 30 hours of research and writing with 20 bucks. Pisses me off to no end.

I admire the business plan behind it even when they make my life hell with thier grade curve changing essays. They must make a fortune.

'Bout Time

[Vornzog]

As someone who is less than 48 hours away from a completed thesis Ph.D. thesis and a little over a week away from my defense, there is only one thing I have to say about this.

It's about damn time.

I hate to see that these services even exist.

I understand the cheating will always go on, at all levels of academics. The practice isn't against any laws, but it is nice to see Google not condoning something legal but flat out wrong.

Re:

[Aqua OS X]

I don't know what your graduate curriculum is like, but there's no way I would be able to get away with hiring someone else to do my thesis work. There is too much faculty oversight, the process takes too long, there are too many demands for new qualitative and quantitative research, etc.

In my humble opinion, faculty must be offering fairly generic curriculum if their curriculum can be exploited by lame paper writing services.

Re:'Bout Time

[martijnd]

As someone who is less than 48 hours away from a completed thesis Ph.D. thesis and a little over a week away from my defense, there is only one thing I have to say about this.

First thing that struck my mind when reading this -- you did make sure to backup recently?

Google Morality Sqad strikes again

[mobby_6kl]

You haven't completed your Piled Higher and Deeper yet, but you already don't remember what's going on out there in the real world?

Forcing students to write completely pointless and retarded essays is what's causing these services to appear and thrive. Seriously, right now I'm writing a "How to Save the World" in 6,000 words essay and no, it's not a technical analysis of ways to stop a comet from smashing into Earth, just general bullshit about population, society, the environment and crap like that. I wrot

Re:

[Oligonicella]

Those essays aren't pointless, as your writing indicates. Compare it to the bulk of illiterate crap on /. You write reasonably well. That's the point of essays actually, not the presentation of your knowledge on a subject, but the exercise in good writing. Most of the writing you will do in professional life should be legible and won't be on topics you would enjoy writing about.

Re:

[dsanfte]

Here in Canada, oral thesis defences are the norm. This is either good or bad, depending on whether you prefer your dressing-down in person or on paper.

Look at it from a different POV

[Donniedarkness]

I'm seeing a lot of anti-censorship posts on here. I'm really inclined to believe that Google did this because the paper-writing ads were popping up all over the place. As a student, it's frustrating to have to find other sources for a paper (to use as referances) and not get any results back but these paper-buying sites. Hopefully, Google is going to push to get them removed from their search index, as well.

Re:

[m0nkyman]

And that is something I'd 100% support, because it's not making a moral choice, it's improving their product...

Re:

[ChronosWS]

Getting them removed from the index is NOT an appropriate solution. The purpose of Google Search (besides to sell ads) is to provide a suitable and complete index of the Web, which includes things some people would rather not have indexed. What you probably (hopefully) want is for them to figure out a way to not return paper-writing services in the result set when you are not looking for a paper-writing service. This is a distinctly different problem than simply removing them from the index altogether.

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The purpose of Google Search is to make money for Google. They will presumably do with their search engine whatever they think is most likely to achieve that goal, taking into account things like negative PR for "censorship" vs. negative PR for "being evil" by supporting unethical businesses and negative PR for returning results full of things most people don't want.

Just advertise the degree outright!

[Stochastism]

Who bothers to sell essays and dissertations when half the spam I get offers me a PhD outright for $200!

Has anyone tried to get ad sense to offer them a degree?

Re:

[antifoidulus]

Why bother when my inbox is full of offers?

Re:Just advertise the degree outright!

[TapeCutter]

"Who bothers to sell essays and dissertations when half the spam I get offers me a PhD outright for $200!"

Phd, pffft - I have the Nigerian finance minister transfering $34M dollars into my account as we speak!

Punish legitimate businesses?

[jimicus]

That really is stretching the definition of a legitimate business.

Granted, there may be no specific law, but it's not as if there's a single respectable university in the land which will knowingly accept work prepared in this way.

that explains it

[mr_musan]

> which now join other items on the banned list such as tobacco, drugs, weapons, and prostitution." i had always wondered why google adds never advertised anything i wanted

Good, this will save them some money

[iamacat]

Truly useful services like prostitution, pot, warez and essay writing need no advertisement. Potential customers will actively look for them in regular Google search results and offline through references from friends. It's the useless services like "free" credit reports that need to spend money on ads in order to rip off clueless people.

Not censorship, service to AdSense cleints

[Per Abrahamsen]

The list of banned adds reflect what Google's AdSense clients, the people who put Google adds on their web pages, are willing to put up with. Many people would be unhappy to see adds for prostitution, guns or tobacco on their web pages, and choose another advertising partner if Google let those through. Losing those partners would hurt more than losing the advertisement customers for the listed products.

Now homework cheating services are on that list.

So this is a case where maximizing profit also happens to be "do no evil" (depending on your definition of evil).

Re:

[Fizzl]

...choose another advertising partner if Google let those through.

Instead of just placing filter on their own banners in adsense settings?

Re:

[hxnwix]

"So this is a case where maximizing profit also happens to be "do no evil" (depending on your definition of evil)"

What are you saying? In this very slashdot article's advert section, we find:

Custom Essay Service
Original Essays, Book Reports, Papers and other Academic Writing.
customessay.com

Essays
High Quality - Instant Download Find one on your topic today!
DueNow.com/Essays/

Is slashdot evil by certain definitions of evil? If correcting grammar makes one a grammar nazi, does correcting evil make one an evil nazi?

But diploma mills are still adverticed

[thue]

Google apparently still allows ads for Diploma mills [wikipedia.org]. Usually they claim that they examine your "life experience", and then grant you a diploma based on what you already know. In practice, they just sell you pieces of paper without checking, and you can then use the diploma to pretend to other people you have taken a real university degree, i.e. fraud.

For example a reporter was able to buy a degree in aerospace engineering, a field he knew nothing about, from Ashwood University [wikipedia.org]. Ashwood University is deceptively named to be similar to Ashford University.

But if you search for "Ashwood University" in Google [slashdot.org] you get plenty of ads. As well as the Wikipedia article which document the fact that the operation is fraudulent. The Wikipedia article is vandalized regularly by people trying to edit out the well-documented criticism. The vandals are probably the university owners or degree holders.

I have sent an email to Google some time ago, saying that they were advertising for fraud. But my email had no lasting effect, obviously.

Will these Essay-Writing Services...

[niceone]

...Write slashdot posts? I'm finding it rather a strain at the moment.

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Can't you just use a computer program?

Hey, we could finally write the real Slashbot! :-)

Re:

[niceone]

Can't you just use a computer program?
---^ parse error at '
Can not recover
falling back to default reply

w00t FRIST POST!

Not a good idea

[Antony-Kyre]

Essay-writing services can be used for non-immoral purposes outside what many think their target audience is. But ignoring this, I have the following to say.

Banning the advertisements isn't going to solve the issue of plagiarism. In fact, it could compound the problem by pushing it underground. If someone is motivated to cheat, they're probably going to cheat regardless of whether they see an advertisement on Google, or whether they have to hunt underground for a service. Afterall, is Google banning search results?

Essay services can give horrible results

[Anonymous Coward]

For the third year of my UK bachelor's degree I was once extremely pressed for time. Personal circumstances, that the essay material was quite peripheral to the core of the study and that I was edging in at the highest grading tier (1st) already led me to try an essay writing service.

I used an essay service that let you specify your desired grade, level (bachelor's degree, masters or PhD, though not which year of bachelor's degree) required turnaround (standard 1 week, express 48h delivered by midnight on t

Google 'contextual' ads

[codecracker007]

...one of the ads seen at the top of this story:

Custom Essay Writing
Professionally written essays and term papers delivered on time
CustomEssayWriting.com


irony meet your elder cousin...

Ironic!

[Vincman]

It's ironic that the some of the Google-ads that I'm seeing below this story now are: 'Where to get academic papers' and 'How to write a better paper' After a reload, I got an ad for online Casinos. Personally, being a friend of someone who runs an online database of essays, I think there are three negatives to this. A. people have a choice and if they choose to cheat and risk penalties that should be their right. B. By moving such choices to the rim of existence, you also make it harder for teachers and s

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Personally, being a friend of someone who writes viruses for a living, I think there are three negatives to making virus writing illegal:

1. People have a choice, and if they choose to distribute viruses and risk penalties, that should be their right.
2. By moving such choices to the rim of existence, you also make it harder for sysadmins to check their systems are secure.
3. You run people out of business who are offering a fairly victimless "crime", at least compared to global thermonuclear war.

Forgive me if I

Re:

[Vincman]

I'd love to hear statistics on that. There are two takes I can take on it. a. that the person cheating learned nothing and would not pass a job-interview (and if they did, what's the value of qualifications?) and b. that the person cheating did learn something, which I find more credible, and got the job based on their perceived qualifications by the interviewer (who should never base their choice on pieces of paper alone). Furthermore, when I said "database of essays" I purposefully did not say "provider

We faced the same dilemma at Uclue.com

[ribuck]

We faced the same dilemma at Uclue.com, a paid Q&A service. Although we don't encourage people to ask for essays to be written, we can't completely block such questions because it's not always easy to tell whether a question is for a student essay or for some other purpose.

We resolved it by deciding that we would reject such questions if there was any hint of them being requested in "final form". In any case, we post the answer publicly on the web, so the essay research is available for all students a

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

We've had a similar problem on some technical Usenet groups where I help out, teaching beginners various programming-related subjects. Some posts are obviously asking us to do their homework. Most are obviously genuine questions. A few are harder to classify.

Our benchmark in the case of ambiguity is whether the person asking the question has demonstrated some effort of their own. For example, if a person posted some source code showing how far they'd got already, and then explained what it seemed to be do

like doping

[e**(i pi)-1]

One can not stop those services like that. Its as if one wanted to get rid of doping in sports by forbidding the advertisement of doping. Having part or all of a theses written from a ghostwriter is very similar to doping. It is cheating. For PhD thesis, where the research has to be defended in a seminar with experts, the fraud is probably difficult. For term papers, schools will have to adapt and add oral examinations for papers which look suspicious. Students will have to sign a statement that they wrote

Bad business practice.

[nurb432]

Its somewhat stupid to refuse business ( revenue ) from *legitimate* and *legal* businesses. But, its their right to do so.

Its also my right not to do business with companies that advertise there, due to their rules.

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Its somewhat stupid to refuse business ( revenue ) from *legitimate* and *legal* businesses.

Not really. If it was as simple as you make out, businesses wouldn't have PR departments.

Stupid

[mapkinase]

The education in US seems to be relying too much on writing papers. That is plain stupid. Instead of trying to catch every plagiarizing bugger, why not to abolish those essays once and forever? Or at least limit them writing only during the class time?

I think that much more problems will be solved and much less will be created when we establish that free education is not an obligation, but an option. It is inhumane to force people learn math if they do not want to.

The major complication of this decision is

Re:

[great om]

This is because class time is for lecture and disccussion, in short, for teaching. And also, few of the papers I had to write in college would've fit into the hour to hour and a half that my college classes were --I was an English/Ancient History major as an undergrad. My assignments averaged well above 10 pages, with many much, much higher than that. On top of that, in class essay writing and research papers are two different beasts, both of which should be required in a college setting. The plagarism p

Re:

[mapkinase]

I hope they do not require papers in physics classes. I could not care less about the level of education of Americans in English or Ancient History (please do not take it personal).

No weapons... are you sure?

[curecollector]

[...] which now join other items on the banned list such as tobacco, drugs, weapons, and prostitution.

http://www.google.com/search?q=grenades [google.com] - turns up an ad reading:


"Grenades
Looking for
grenades? Save!
www.shoppingpage.us"

(Now, I know that they're not actually selling grenades, but rather have a pile of ads based off of a list of generic words/terms, but it's pretty funny. "Landmines" used to turn up an Ebay ad reading "Looking for landmines?")

Re:

[cliffski]

google isnt the government, its a privte company, they can deal with who they want to. I'm not forced to sell my products or services to anyone I don't want to, neither are google.
What annoys me is they dont give a damn about *where* they advertise. If I find a dubious website that resells copyrighted software I worked on without a licence, and is part funded by google adsense, they don't give a damn, they are happy to advertise on any site on the web, regardless what kind of site it is. Their terms of serv

Re:

[delt0r]

Well most of the addsence set up is 100% automatic. They simple don't "see" the sites or screen them. You can complain I think. It has worked for others. But once Google become a public company, they cannot legaly do no evil if it redueces stockholer value. So i don't think they are worse than M$ yet, it will take time.

Re:

[mwvdlee]

Just like with eBay and other major sources of illegal warez, it's a matter of scale.

If you're a small independant developer with unsufficient funds to fight Google for years in court, they'll just ignore your claims. If you're a big university which employes professors in law, Google will listen.

However, this is not censorship

[Flying pig]

You are using some definition of censorship that I do not understand. Tobacco, drugs and prostitution are not small evils. They cost society a huge amount of money - in police, medical and social welfare costs - as a result of their effects. If I want to run a shop front - which is what Google's paid for advertising basically is - and decide I do not want to promote things with heavy adverse effects on society, that is my right as a citizen. It would be censorship - i.e. enforcement of a particular moral at

Re:

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Tobacco, drugs and prostitution are not small evils. They cost society a huge amount of money ...

Only because 'society' has chosen to waste money on those costs. They are all victimless in that the only people who are hurt are those who choose to be hurt. In countries where prostitution is legal, like the majority of the first world, the costs are much less than they are in the USofA.

If I want to run a shop front - which is what Google's paid for advertising basically is - and decide I do not want to promote things with heavy adverse effects on society, that is my right as a citizen.

Surely you are not unaware of Google's claim to "do no evil?" If you lack that context, then I can see why you would go off on a tangent about it being their right to do whatever they want. I'm pointing out that their

Re:

[mwvdlee]

Just like a newspaper should be allowed to report on narcotics yet ban advertisements for narcotics, so should Google be allowed to provide those links in the search results yet ban advertisements for it.

Re:

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The question is: "is it immoral for Google to actively support services attempting to help students cheat in exchange for money?". Its beyond my capacity to think up an ethical framework that wouldn't answer that question as firmly YES.

Then your capacity is mighty small. The reason Google should not be policing term paper cheaters is the same reason they should not (and are not) involved in policing any of the thousands of other ethicly dubious activities -- It's not their job.

Making Google the police of the internet has so many drawbacks it is hard to know where to start, but here are two big ones - wasted resources that would have gone to doing a better job of providing actual service and questionable decisions about where to "draw t

Re:

[Oligonicella]

And, your capacity appears self-centered. Supporting unethical activities is unethical in itself. Ethics is the job of every adult, so yes, Virginia, it is their job.

As pointed out elsewhere, it is their company and they and only they have the right to decide where to put their research and effort. You are not the one to dictate if their resources are wasted, they are. It's amusing that the foremost search engine in the world is criticized for not "doing a better job". Under who's standards? Yours

Re:

[MichaelSmith]

Prostitution is banned?

Where I live it is perfectly legal to advertise prostitution [yellowpages.com.au]. I can see that google will take the attitude that it is illegal most places so it is safer for them to ban it. But there is a line to be drawn here. Essay writing services seem to be mainly an academic issue. Lots of people would never have heard about it. Perhaps they should ban advertising for game hacks.

Re:Prostitution?

[dwarfsoft]

To me it seems a little pointless to be banning advertising Essay writing services, especially when the google search is for "Essay writing services". Even without the paid ads, the search engine should still provide a list of businesses. Surely they are only taking a moral stance of not profiting from this kind of service rather than really inhibiting people.

Re:

[SL Baur]

Perhaps they should ban advertising for game hacks.

Yeah, that's extremely annoying. I hate seeing ads in google from the same jerks who are relentlessly spamming me in the game.

Re:

[GregPK]

Thats the thing, it's so easy to pay someone else to do the writing. You can even upload your own writings and get paid for them. I think the smartest thing a teacher can do in this day and age is upload all thier own work and get paid for it while they continue to flunk students for cheating.

Re:

[someone1234]

Google is not a state owned firm, they may refuse to do business with you. Advertise with M$ or Yahoo.

Re: Hypocrisy! You mean Inconsistency

[giafly]

Google is taking such a moral high morals; considering that they censored searches in China.

None of us are wholly consistent, Mr AC, but this doesn't mean we can't ever take a "moral high morals". Google seems to be better than most.