Google is saying goodbye to sexually explicit images and videos on their Blogger platform. The news has been covered by quite a few places obviously, I found the discussion in the comments on Engadget to be a bit entertaining.

From the article:

Many X-rated Blogger accounts might cease to exist in the near future, as Google will no longer allow anyone to post sexually explicit or nude videos and images starting on March 23rd, 2015. It doesn’t end there, though: Mountain View also wants old account owners to delete any content that violates that rule, or else it will forcibly make those blogs private (all posts will only be visible to owners) after the aforementioned date. Blogger’s current content policy allows visuals that show nudity and sexual activities (barring illegal ones like bestiality) so long as the blog is marked “adult.” Censoring those types of entries, according to the policy, “is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression.” Google has yet to reveal why it had a sudden change of heart.

Apparently Jason Scott from the Internet Archive was not pleased by the news and tweeted out things like “The best way to phrase the Google methodology with the Blogger material is Devastating. Literally disappearing the voices involved randomly.”

I think that is a bit over the top, there are a million other places to find sexually explicit material and you can use Tumblr to publish it, or you can buy a domain name and have complete control over your intellectual property.

One commenter pointed out

If you ain’t paying for your service, you ain’t a customer. Google can enforce any policy they want. In fact they might ban nude photos from gmail one day! How much do you pay them for gmail?

If you want good services, pay for them!

To me this comes as no surprise, Google started changing other policies related to porn last year.

From the Huffington Post:

This week, Google banned advertisements that, in the words of the company, “promote graphic depictions of sexual acts.” These include not only “hardcore pornography” but any depiction of “graphic sexual acts” like “masturbation” and “genital, anal, and oral sexual activity.”

Eesh.

This means that websites with this type of material will no longer be able to advertise using AdWords, Google’s massive advertising network that places ads in search results and on outside websites. Ads that don’t contain explicit words themselves, but still link to explicit sites, will also not be allowed. However, advertisements for strip clubs, lap dances, “non-intimate massage services” and “sexual dating sites” will still be permitted.