[glimcat]

My first thought on these matters is usually "unscrupulous affiliate."

This is particularly so when the writer hasn't bothered to contact GoToMeeting first. The fast reward loop behind posting sensational and confrontational headlines unfortunately tends to outweigh the backlash from not doing basic research before publishing.

For that matter, it's possible that MeetingBurner took out the ads in attempt to generate press. There's no way to rationally conclude who the bad actor is, if there is one, because the writer didn't bother to do their research before holding their hand out for traffic.

[benologist]

"This is particularly so when the writer hasn't bothered to contact GoToMeeting first. The fast reward loop behind posting sensational and confrontational headlines unfortunately tends to outweigh the backlash from not doing basic research before publishing."

TNW have already established themselves as a scabby little rag that plagiarize and ignore Creative Common attribution requirements, not doing research sounds like par for the course.

[ifficiency]

I can promise you we did NOT take out the ads to generate press. You are entitled to your opinion but I can assure you this was not done by our team.

[glimcat]

Not saying you did, just that the journalist has failed to meet minimum standards.

On the other hand, the problem could have been resolved with a phone call - from your lawyer, if necessary. Immediately making a blog post out of it on your end wasn't the most scrupulous thing to do either.

It also sounds like the problem arose from an innocent mistake on their end. Google doesn't warn against this when pushing their keyword insertion feature. It's on the user to be responsible, but Google could do a far better job on documentation.