In a recent blog post, Google officially announced that the company will no longer serve advertisements relating to digital currencies from June 2018. According to the company’s new restricted financial products policy, even digital currency exchanges will no longer be able to advertise on Google’s extensive network.

Google stated that the new ban will apply to digital currencies and related content, including (but not limited to) initial coin offerings, digital currency exchanges, wallets, and digital currency trading advice.

Canada and the corporate precedent

Google’s decision is not entirely unexpected for members of the digital community, as a potential policy update has long been speculated. The move follows Facebook’s decision in early 2018 to enforce similar rules, as in a sweeping policy update, Facebook banned digital currency, ICO, and binary option adverts on its network.

Previously, a Canadian official praised Facebook’s ‘digital currency ban,’ and suggested that Google should follow suit.

“We’re very pleased with Facebook’s decision,” said Jason Roy, Chairman of the Canadian Securities Administration (CSA). “My hope is that Google will enact a similar policy, where they specifically name products like binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies.”

With this policy update, Google did just that, having specifically named all three of the products that the CSA outlined. However, it is unclear if Google’s decision comes from external pressure from regulatory bodies, or is merely part of a broader mission to declutter its network. In 2017 alone, Google reportedly removed 3.2 billion “bad ads” from its advertising platform.

Are bad actors hurting the industry’s reputation?

With the industry’s increased popularity, digital currency terminology grew to accommodate a broad spectrum of different uses. Due to the existence of bad actors within the space, it appears that corporations are punishing the industry as a whole.

However, despite new policies from companies like Facebook and Google, proponents argue that the news may not be detrimental to honest digital currency projects. Here, the community points to the fact that the majority of genuine digital currencies may not necessarily need to advertise through these mediums.

Google’s policy update may also serve to counter a currently prevalent issue in the digital currency landscape. Through promoting fake websites designed to look as real as possible on search engines, fake versions of digital currency exchanges continue to phish users and steal login information.

Further, the sweeping removal of digital currency ads could help to treat the abundance of fraudulent projects that currently exist online. The removal of ads that over-promise or are otherwise illegitimate could help the public’s view of the industry in the long term, and reaffirm its status as a genuine asset class.

Image credit: Google logo

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