In June, Google will ban online advertising that promotes cryptocurrencies and initial currency offers (ICO) as part of a wider campaign against the marketing of a new species of high-risk financial products.
Google, of Alphabet, announced the decision on Wednesday in an update of its policy, under which it will begin to block ads for "cryptocurrencies and related content." Thus, it joins Facebook, which adopted a similar measure in January, which leaves the two largest sellers of advertising on the web out of reach of the nascent sector of digital currencies.
Bitcoin, the most important cryptocurrency by market value, reduced an advance of 2% after the announcement of Google and was negotiated with few changes to US $ 9,099. Ripple and Ether, their rivals, also stopped the rises.
Google prohibits the advertising of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency. Photo: AP
The Internet search giant will also restrict the advertising of financial products such as binary options, a risky derivative instrument with an all-or-nothing payment. At this precise moment, Google queries of terms such as "binary options" and "buy bitcoin" show four advertisements in the first results.
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Facebook, Google's main rival for advertising dollars, banned crypto ads in January. Some aggressive companies found a loophole: deliberately writing bad words such as "bitcoin" in their advertisements. A Google spokesman said the company's policies will try to foresee resources like those.
The updated policy of Google was known with the publication of its report on "bad notices", review of a series of malicious, deceptive and controversial ads that Google deletes from its gigantic network of search, exhibition and video. In 2017, Google eliminated, he said, more than 3.2 billion ads on the web. Many more than the 1,700 million in 2016.
Google prohibits the advertising of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
The symbols of bitcoin and ethereum, two of the best-known cryptocurrencies. Photo: Bloomberg
Last year, for example, Google removed 79 million ads because they attracted clicks to websites with malware. The company is also accelerating an offensive against deceptive content. It suspended 7,000 customer accounts for advertising that imitated an informative article - what Google calls "tabloid cloaking" - and blocked more than 12,000 websites for copying information from other publications.
It is unlikely that the 3.2 billion ads removed in 2017 or the next ban on cryptocurrencies will have a strong impact on sales. Last year, Google generated US $ 95.400 million in advertising revenue, 20% more than in 2016.