Illegal markets? It is legal in all of Canada, in pretty much the way alcohol is. Are the apps unavailable in Canada where the legal pot (which is in some cases far superior to the shaggy bits one would get on the streets) comes from government certified sources?<p>But then again, I haven't seen a Google booze ad. Do they allow alcohol ads?
More than likely, Google's lawyers were worried about DA's in various US states, cities or feds going after them. This has little or nothing to do with "morality" or "ethics." This is CYA, not a moral panic.
And yet a large chunk of Google employees and executives enjoy all of the freedoms provided to them in the state of California, including legal marijuana.
Someone I know started a b2b business in the marijuana industry. Tried doing google ads and got all their ads blocked. Every time they reached out to support they gave them a different reason for blocking the ad. And every time after complying and re-submitting, the ads would get blocked again. Finally they gave up on Google ads.
Has anyone opposing this action thought maybe an aggressively competitive tech corporation doesn't want to be held liable for assisting in distribution of a drug that isn't nationwide legal? They have way larger concerns than worrying about this.
For the love of god can we please make weed legal here in the US? Anyone, anywhere can buy weed at anytime, and its been that way for like 50 fuckin years now. Can we all agree that the war on weed is over, and the US Gov't lost. WTF!!
I've been spending some time in California and I noticed a worrying trend that it gets harder and harder to purchase marijuana. ID requirements are getting more onerous, MasterCard no longer accepted, etc. Things are going backwards!
Thank goodness they shut this down quick. It's not like this was just a straightforward app designed to keep tabs on your chattel, I mean female family members. Marijuana actually hurts people!
I’m literally texting a friend today about helping him with his legal Canadian pot site. The importance of the “open web” sure got more concrete today<p>What is the real world small business alternative to the play Store - progressive web apps? Fdroid?
A key difference between Android and iOS: on Android, there are alternatives to Google’s app store; on iOS there are not. So it would be entirely possible for someone who lives in a country where marijuana is legal and wishes to facilitate the legal industry there to set up an app store (cloning F-Droid could be a quick start) which offered such apps. He'd be out of luck on iOS.<p>The federal marijuana laws are — mostly — blatantly unconstitutional, of course, but they are still on the books. I don't blame Google for not wanting to litigate the issue; their lawyers are probably acutely aware of the Backpage case.
Wonder what they mean by "facilitate"? Were certain mail order places offering apps they're banning? directly taking payments?<p>Or are they seriously going after stuff like Weedmaps that just offers references to places that sell.
But yet they have booze delivery apps all throughout the Play Store. They said no cannabis because the Play Store is for kids. But I suppose quick booze delivery is fine for "their" kids.<p>“At Google Play, we’re committed to providing a positive, safe environment for children and families,” the blog post read. “…After taking input from users and developers we are evolving our Google Play policies to provide additional protections for children and families.”
Better ban signal. Do you want that wrapped in "fighting terrorism", "war on drugs" or "think of the children".<p>We google should not be in a position of power to decide what is allowable and what is not. That is for elected officials. If they have more than reasonable influence, break them up.<p>Same for any group of people anywhere. Get elected.
This is a matter of geographic laws conflicting with worldwide applicability and something we're seeing more and more of, both with things like GDPR but also certain states having much tighter regulations around things like biometrics. In that light, it's interesting to see what Google has done with things like their Arts and Culture app, which has a "take a selfie and see what artwork you most resemble" feature. That feature (but not the whole app) is disabled if they detect that you're within the bounds of Illinois which has some of the strictest regulations about personal data.
My guess is it's less about a moral issue with marijuana and more about a fear of upsetting people displaying the adds. Many of whom won't want to be associated with something federally illegal. The alternative headline being "Google displays illegal drug adds on school site" (or some other page that probably should not be showing ads)