[hlmencken]

This is not stealing, and even if it is illegal that is a bad way to put it. Also, google's service is primarily to the searcher so this isn't a huge issue for them.

[smt88]

> google's service is primarily to the searcher

You are very wrong. For many years, nearly 100% of Google's revenue was from AdSense.

What if someone spends days writing an article and posts it on his blog. Then, someone else copies and pastes it onto BuzzFeed, which becomes the top search result for that topic.

BuzzFeed is making money that the same blogger would have made from his own content. Now, also assume Google serves ads to BuzzFeed, but it does not serve ads to the blogger. Google has a financial interest in ignoring the provenance of the content in this case.

Is all of that ethically acceptable?

[morgante]

> You are very wrong. For many years, nearly 100% of Google's revenue was from AdSense.

That's incredibly untrue. A substantial portion of Google's revenue has always been and continues to be from first-party AdWords ads.

The fact that you're using BuzzFeed as an example, a firm which emphatically does not use display ads, shows how little you know about this.

[magicalist]

> For many years, nearly 100% of Google's revenue was from AdSense

Google has always gotten a very large majority of its advertising revenue from ads on its own sites, not on third party sites.