Google Shopping Censors Firearms and Ammo

This year seems to be the year that large corporations have started to take a stand for or against guns. Back in January the Ultimate Fighting Championship banned Gun and Ammo companies from sponsoring their fighters. Then a month later Starbucks showed their support for the Second Amendment when they announced that they would not heed calls to ban firearms in their stores.

Well it looks like another company has taken a stance on firearms, and they’re one of the biggest companies in the world. “Don’t be evil” is the informal corporate motto of the big G, A.K.A. Google. Well it looks like Google thinks that people buying and selling firearms, ammo and gun parts are doing evil, so they’ve started to restrict the listing of them within Google Shopping.

Google switched their Shopping service recently from a format that allowed online merchants to list their products for free within Google Shopping to a format where merchants had to start to pay to have their products listed. That’s not the issue here however, Google just wants to monetize their Shopping service and that’s fine. What is the issue is their banning of a guns, ammunition, optics, scopes, accessories and gun parts like AR-15 Parts Kit sets.

Google sent out an Email to their customers letting them know that their business is no longer appreciated, HamLund Tactical received an email and posted it over on 68forums.com. Note, this effects firearm products in Google Shopping and Google Adwords advertising only, not in organic Google Search results (yet?). More rules as to what can and cannot be listed within Google Shopping and Adwords can be seen here.

Dear Merchant,

We’re writing to let you know about some upcoming changes to the product listings you submit to Google. As we recently announced, we are starting to transition our shopping experience to a commercial model that builds on Product Listing Ads. This new shopping experience is called Google Shopping. As part of this transition, we’ll begin to enforce a set of new policies for Google Shopping in the coming weeks. A new list of the allowed, restricted, and prohibited products on Google Shopping is available on our new policy page – http://www.google.com/appserve/mkt/ApI7UWRj6OCZpd.

Based on a review of the products you’re currently submitting, it appears that some of the content in your Merchant Center account, HamLund Tactical, will be affected by these policy changes. In particular we found that your products may violate the following policies:

Weapons

When we make this change, Google will disapprove all of the products identified as being in violation of policies. We ask that you make any necessary changes to your feeds and/or site to comply, so that your products can continue to appear on Google Shopping.

To help you through this new set of policies and how to comply with them, we would like to give you some specific suggestions regarding the changes needed to keep your offers running on Google Shopping.

Weapons

As highlighted on our new policy page http://www.google.com/appserve/mkt/ApI7UWRj6OCZpd, in order to comply with the Google Shopping policies you need to comply first with the AdWords policies http://www.google.com/appserve/mkt/StQ08jAzM4fVtG. We do not allow the promotion or sale of weapons and any related products such as ammunitions or accessory kits on Google Shopping. In order to comply with our new policies, please remove any weapon-related products from your data feed and then re-submit your feed in the Merchant Center. For more information on this policy please visit http://www.google.com/appserve/mkt/GbBNIGHOribLzf.

We’re constantly reviewing our policies, and updating them when necessary, to ensure we’re offering the best experience possible to our users. We’ve identified a set of policy principles to govern our policy efforts on Google Shopping in the U.S. These principles are:

1) Google Shopping should provide a positive experience to users. Showing users the right products at the right time can truly enhance a user’s experience. When people trust us to deliver them to a destination that’s relevant, original, and easy to navigate this creates a positive online experience to the benefit of both users and merchants.

2 ) Google Shopping should be safe for all users. User safety is everyone’s business, and we can’t do business with those who don’t agree. Scams, phishing, viruses, and other malicious activities on the Internet damage the value of the Internet for everyone. Trying to get around policies or “game the system” is unfair to our users, and we can’t allow that.

3) Google Shopping should comply with local laws and regulations. Many products and services are regulated by law, which can vary from country to country. All advertising, as well as the products and services being advertised, must clearly comply with all applicable laws and regulations. For the most part, our policies aren’t designed to describe every law in every country. All advertisers bear their own responsibility for understanding the laws applicable to their business. Our policies are often more restrictive than the law, because we need to be sure we can offer services that are legal and safe for all users.

4) Google Shopping should be compatible with Google’s brand decisions. Google Shopping must be compatible with company brand decisions. Our company has a strong culture and values, and we’ve chosen not to allow ads that promote products and services that are incompatible with these values. In addition, like all companies, Google sometimes makes decisions based on technical limitations, resource constraints, or requirements from our business partners. Our policies reflect these realities.

We’ve given much thought to our stance on this content, as well as the potential effect our policy decision could have on our Merchants, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Sincerely,

The Google Shopping Team

© 2012 Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Merchant Center account.

This is pretty troubling, how will this effect the multi-billion dollar gun industry? Overnight thousands of online merchants have been hit, and while this may not cause many online stores to go under, many will feel the pinch from this decision by Google.

The same day that this was revealed by Google the online gun shopping engine GunSpec announced that are ready to fill the void. And there’s always Bing Shopping, the Microsoft competitor to Google.

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