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Don’t Be Evil? Google Uses Shady Ad Tactics To Edge Out Competitor

Post a Comment October 26, 2008 – 6:37 pm | Permalink |  Print This Post |

Two weeks ago we wrote about Yamli, a powerful transliteration engine that allows users to use their Latin keyboards to type in Arabic text. The service has gotten rave reviews (see the comments), and serves a very large audience that has largely been neglected.

Now we’ve gotten word that Google has launched its own competing service, and is using a dubious advertising scheme to get the word out. Running searches for “Yamli” or “Yamli.com” on any of Google’s Arabic portals (like Google.ae) will prominently display ads for Google’s competing service alongside the search results.

Update: Google has removed the ad.