Personal Democracy Forum reports that Google is again facing accusations of political bias for taking down ads, this time from the right side of the political spectrum. RightMarch.com loudly complained when Google suspended its keyword campaign that parodied an attack campaign against Republican Texas Representative Tom Delay. The RightMarch.com campaign used the very same wording to attack Democrat Senator Nancy Pelosi. Google claimed that both campaigns were taken down as soon as they were reviewed by actual humans.

That human element in the review process seems to have had some catching up to do, as the Personal Democracy story found many ads attacking specific political figures, such as Tom Delay and John Bolton. During the reporting of the story, though, the (mostly left-leaning) ads disappeared. These "attacks" remain a gray area, and Google's own guidelines are deliberately squishy. Past incidents have typically involved the removal of left-leaning ads.

Google went through an internal process through the summer and fall of last year in which it tried to come up with better standards against which to judge controversial ads. It failed to keep this confidential development of internal rules private, however, with materials leaking out onto the web, revealing a hodge-podge of rules combining the principled with the expedient.

Google has had a difficult time trying to come up with guidelines for permissible ad copy in the commercial realm, never mind the highly charged environment of politics. And when it has made a decision to ban a certain class of ads, it has found it difficult to execute.