Google's cougar double standards

[Gob]

Google is being accused of double standards after a decision to censor the placement of ads for a dating site catering for "cougars" - older women who seek the company of younger men.

The internet company has taken an unusually moralistic standpoint on advertisements for the cougar dating website, refusing to serve the company's ads into third-party websites because it deems them "unsafe for family audiences".

The ads are for CougarLife, a Canadian-owned dating service that "pairs women in their prime with younger men".

Claudia Opdenkelder, the founder of the dating site, said Google told her that ads promoting this type of liaison would no longer appear in the 6700 non-Google websites into which the text and banner ads were served. The ads had been running since last October.

Opdenkelder told Canada's National Post newspaper that she was told the ads were deemed unsafe for family audiences. As a result, even if the ads contained no suggestive words or images, they would still be classified as adult content.

A Google spokesperson told the newspaper that the decision to invoke the ad ban also had to do with the landing page to which the ads were linking, inferring that this was also too risqué for family readers.

But, like the ads themselves, the home page of CougarLife reveals nothing one wouldn't find on the pages of a mainstream women's magazine. Racy, maybe, but not rude.

Google even asked the company, which has more than 1 million members, if it would be amenable to changing "the 'cougar' theme/language specifically (including the domain if necessary)".

Typically, a company such as CougarLife would buy keywords such as "cougar" or "cougar dating" to ensure that the ads would appear alongside search pages and within content pages from third-party publishers, featuring stories with a related theme.

The ad campaign was costing CougarLife $US100,000 ($114,000) a month and generated referrals accounting for 60 per cent of its traffic, the company told The New York Times.

More infuriating for Opdenkelder, a 39-year-old practising cougar who is involved with a man 14 years her junior, is that the ban does not apply to ads promoting services catering for older men seeking younger women.

"We just want to be treated the same way as all the others, and the discrimination against the word 'cougar' makes it even worse," she told the National Post. "It makes us - cougar women - feel like dirty perverts."

Meanwhile, Google continues to serve ads on behalf of a website called ArrangementSeeks. The site describes itself as "the original Sugar Daddy service catering to ambitious and attractive girls seeking successful and generous benefactors".

Both CougarLife and ArrangementSeeks are owned by the same company: Avid Life Media.


http://www.smh.com.au/technology/biz-te ... -v9zx.html

Fuck Google, cougars are a wonderful phenomena.

[BoSoxGal]

Recently I asked an IRL friend, and now I'll ask here:

What is the age difference required to qualify as a cougar?

[Crackpot]

Gob
You're just saying that because it opens up the young single female demographic.

[Gob]

Recently I asked an IRL friend, and now I'll ask here:

What is the age difference required to qualify as a cougar?

I've always thought it was a case of attitude?

[BoSoxGal]

I'm 39 and the guy I'm currently having great sex with is 32 - and a totally buff gym rat.

Does that count?

[Gob]

Way to make the girls here cheer BSG!!



I think we can consider you a cougar, if you do not mind the term.

T-shirt's in the post..

[Daisy]

I'm 39 and the guy I'm currently having great sex with is 32 - and a totally buff gym rat.

Does that count?

I'd say that was damned lucky of you

I'm 40 and mine's 35

High Five!!

If that makes us "cougars" then Rawr!!

[The Hen]

I am sure you both qualify as cougars. High five you two.

Does it count if Gob looks younger than me?

[Guinevere]

Oh I'm certainly feline (and in my early 40s), but as a Lioness I've just never been interested in boy toys -- I prefer the King of the Jungle (and a certain 10-years-older Swede who fills that role rather well).

(which just illustrates the point that we all have our own preferences and it is indeed ridiculously hypocritical of Google to treat the Cougar site any differently than the one for Sugar Daddys)

[Gob]

Any "Doc Martin" fans?

Remember the furore over "Aunty Joan and the painter"?

IMDB discussion here..

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408381/board/flat/90399744

Was anyone else as shocked and put off by the inclusion of the overly graphic image of Doc martins Auntie Joan and the Painter having sex on a kitchen table in episode 4?

It may seem to some a bit prudish, but to me it has tainted the whole series. I felt that until now I could happily recommend this program even to my grandmother. I fail to see why they needed to vulgarise so graphically what is essentially a light and charming series of a quaint seaside village. Why couldn't they have achieved the same outcome of the painter and Joan having an intimate relationship by showing perhaps the painter just leaving Joan's bedroom and adjusting his clothes as Martin walks in?

Ps. American chums, you would love "Doc Martin" if you haven't seen it.

[Jarlaxle]

I'm 39 and the guy I'm currently having great sex with is 32 - and a totally buff gym rat.

Does that count?

It might...you need to post a couple of bikini pics so we can be sure!

*runs away*

[Gob]

You want pictures of BSG's "32 yr old totally buff gym rat" in a bikini?

Jarl, I didn't think you liked your muffin buttered that side..

[The Hen]

I got a picture of a rat in a bikini. Though she is a little sunburnt.

Owchy.

[BoSoxGal]

Jarl, I didn't think you liked your muffin buttered that side..

I didn't, either. Who knew?

eta: Jarl, I'm still working off the last size. Bikini pics to follow, probably by end of summer . . .

[Andrew D]

Hmmm. 39-year-old woman with 32-year-old man is a cougar. 40-year-old woman with 35-year-old woman is a cougar.

I'm 46; my wife is 60. So what is she -- a cradle-robber?

[loCAtek]

YuCatec is younger than me, but not by a lot...

WeZ going through issues, so as an ego booster I answered one of those ads from a younger man seeking older women. (If the women are cougars, what are the young men?) He was really close by, so it was suggested we just meet for coffee. He was freakin' 24!

...and he found me sexy, he seZ! Talk about an ego-boost! WoT!

[BoSoxGal]

Hmmm. 39-year-old woman with 32-year-old man is a cougar. 40-year-old woman with 35-year-old woman is a cougar.

I'm 46; my wife is 60. So what is she -- a cradle-robber?

She's most definitely a cougar!

And you just rose several notches in my estimation. Though I always thought highly of you anyway.

I guess I also wanted to add to the conversation that I think it's insulting to assume an older woman with a younger man is playing with a 'boy toy', as Guin implied in her post.

I doubt very much your wife considers you a boy toy, Andrew D - and I can say with certainty that I simply don't date, much less have sex with, men who can't keep up with me intellectually.

Strength of character, personality, intelligence and sense of humor can be already quite established in a man (or woman) at a young age; thus dating a younger man/woman doesn't automatically require relaxing one's standards or expectations in that regard.

[Andrew D]

I doubt very much your wife considers you a boy toy, Andrew D

Not usually. But when she's in the mood to, it's fine with me.

... and I can say with certainty that I simply don't date, much less have sex with ....

There's a difference?

Strength of character, personality, intelligence and sense of humor can be already quite established in a man (or woman) at a young age; thus dating a younger man/woman doesn't automatically require relaxing one's standards or expectations in that regard.

And physical attractiveness can persist for decades after first being attained. (Or first occurring or first manifesting itself or whatever.) As my goddaughter said to me recently, "Your wife is 60, and she's hot!"

In my experience (which should not necessarily be taken as representative of anyone else's), physical attractiveness is, once one gets beyond the first look, highly dependent on the far more important non-physical attractivenesses which one perceives in another. I've encountered women I thought beautiful at first, but the more I got to know them, the less I liked them; and the less I liked them, the physically uglier to my eye they became. (The small grin that was at first appealingly flirtatious became revoltingly malicious, etc.)

Conversely, I've encountered women I thought homely at first, but the more I got to know them, the more I liked them; and the more I liked them, the physically prettier to my eye they became. (The smile that was at first well-intentioned but vacuous became empathetically comprehending, etc.)

As someone once remarked of breasts, it's not that you're turned on to someone because of her breasts; it's that her breasts are the ones attached to the person you're turned on to.

[Gob]

To paraphrase Paul Newman, "When you're younger you just want to stuff your face with cheap burgers all day, when you're older you prefer the refined subtleties and pleasures of gourmet cooking".

[Andrew D]

Perhaps hot dogs and/or tacos would be more apropos ....