2019-1-13 19:55 |
Ethereum has a big update coming up in the form of Constantinople in about 3 days. However, things seem to be going wrong for the 3rd largest cryptocurrency which is currently down over 91 percent from its all-time high.
This past week, Ethereum prices declined heavily and ETh/USD remains at risk of more losses. After losing its 2nd spot to XRP yet again now, looks like Ethereum ads are banned by the Google. Earlier this week, an Ethereum startup Decenter reported of this issue stating,
“We’ve been using Google Ads for the past 6 months to help us get more visibility for our smart contract auditing services and we’ve noticed a strange change in the last few days. It seems that Google completely blacklisted Ethereum as a keyword. Any of the keywords that contain ‘ethereum’ in our campaigns are no longer showing ads as of January 9th.”
Reportedly, Ethereum is the only cryptocurrency this is being banned by Google as keywords like Bitcoin, EOS, and ICOs among others are showing up in the searches.
“Any of the keywords that contain ‘Ethereum’ in our campaigns are no longer showing ads as of January 9th… you can try searches such as ‘Ethereum smart contract audits’ and ‘EOS smart contract audits’ – only the latter will show Ads in results.”
The policy page of the Google limits the advertisements by crypto asset exchanges by country with US and Japan being the only allowed ones. However, despite being not an exchange, the startup tried the listed countries to no avail.
Google Isn’t Sold On Cryptos Yet!In March, the search engine giant imposed a blanket ban on crypto ads only to lift it a few months later in September. At the time of the ban, Scott Spencer, a Google executive said,
“We don’t have a crystal ball to know where the future is going to go with cryptocurrencies, but we’ve seen enough consumer harm or potential for consumer harm that it’s an area that we want to approach with extreme caution.”
At that time, experts and analysts suggested that scam-related promotions on the platform could be the reason behind the ban. After lifting the ban, the tech giant allowed the crypto ads to run under a set of strict guidelines to only a limited group of companies.
Despite being the unseemly ban on Ethereum ads, it is unlikely that Google will specifically target a cryptocurrency. The startup also commented,
“We are concerned that Google is targeting Ethereum specifically for some reason and wanted to see if we as a community could put some pressure on the Google Ads team to adjust their keyword policy or to at least provide a reasonable explanation for such discriminatory regulations.”
Just last year in November, Lukas Stefanko, a malware researcher claimed founding fake crypto wallets that were reportedly designed to phish users’ credit card details.
In the light of such events, it can be expected that Google will continue to be wary of crypto ads until it is confident in its ability to filter out scams and fraudulent activities.
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