[numbsafari]

Google wants to be a useful search engine that returns relevant results. If they are returning links to malware/spyware/adware in exchange for money rather than linking to legitimate results, don't you think that is not only unethical but borderline illegal?

If Google's product is US then they are effectively selling US to the malware/spyware/adware fiends.

Google absolutely has the responsibility to return relevant, meaningful and SAFE results to its users. They already try and do that in a lot of cases. It's just that, in this case, they are getting paid not to.

[zenspunk]

Did you not read my post? I said they could easily (relatively) solve the issue of these guys turning up in search results.

The problem they can't solve, I argue, is to ensure that people violating copyright law (of some arbitrary country) can't advertise with Adwords.

Edit: Look, I can do retrospective edits too!

[numbsafari]

Here's google's policy on copyright violations in AdWords:

https://adwords.google.com/support/select/professionals/bin/...

To quote:

"For AdWords and related programs such as Google AdWords Certification, if we receive a notice or otherwise have reason to believe that an advertiser's or client manager's site is infringing, we may remove the offender's advertising in compliance with the DMCA."

So, they already do this. The question is, whether or not the VLC team has submitted a complaint that meets their criteria.

My guess is that this is something the FSF should really get involved in, except they are probably too busy taking money from Google to talk up how "open" Android is to be bothered by a little pro-bono work from a hard-working group of OSS devs.

[jbk]

We speak here about US law, not arbitrary country, because that where Google is based.

They can solve the problem of checking reports on US copyright violations with Adwords.

[zenspunk]

Google also does business and has employees and servers in many other countries. Why should they not enforce the laws of those countries too?

[jbk]

Google refuses to comply to some French law about logs retention because their servers are not in France. Why would it be otherwise in the opposite situation?