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GWEI - Google Will Eat Itself

An Art Project that Uses AdSense as the Raw Material

         

cwnet

3:39 pm on Sep 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



German news magazine Der Spiegel reports about a group of artist who engage in click fraud in order to:

"By establishing this autocannibalistic model we deconstruct the new global advertisment mechanisms by rendering them into a surreal click-based economic model."

Quote from the "GWEI - Google Will Eat Itself" website - google for it ;-)

(source in german: [spiegel.de...]

[edited by: martinibuster at 4:55 pm (utc) on Sep. 5, 2006]
[edit reason] Fixed URL [/edit]

pmkpmk

3:43 pm on Sep 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Corrected link: [spiegel.de...]

martinibuster

5:02 pm on Sep 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



[gwei.org...]

[battellemedia.com...] (June 2005)

It's an art project where they roll over their AdSense funds into Google Shares, and somehow in the future will give it away to their site visitors.

This sounds familiar, but I couldn't find a thread about it.

benevolent001

5:04 pm on Sep 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Hi can some one of you summarize what that original link says, its is some binary 0101010 to me , i dont know german

plasma

5:14 pm on Sep 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I can't see what this has to do with arts?

europeforvisitors

5:20 pm on Sep 5, 2006 (gmt 0)



I can't see what this has to do with arts?

Think "politics as art" or "anarchy as art."

incrediBILL

8:41 pm on Sep 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Sounds like click fraud to me.

Hope Google sends a couple of bounty hunters after them.

Jean

9:25 pm on Sep 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Sounds like click fraud to me.

Hope Google sends a couple of bounty hunters after them.

Seems that this has already occured (see [gwei.org...] ) so "Click Fraud as Art" doesn't cut it.

WolfLover

9:39 pm on Sep 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I'm sorry, but this website really p*ssed me off! First, they think they are really smart, when they are a bunch of smart *sses!

They have the nerve to show you their Google checks with the account numbers smudged out. They are bragging about being thieves and getting away with it. You'll notice the Google ban letters they have received it shows all different names that the letters are addressed to. So they are obviously using fake names, aliases, with fake id's to cash these checks.

Outright FRAUD and they are PROUD of it! It's really sickening. The rest of us break our *sses trying to do things correctly and in the right way and they continue to get by with it.

Obviously G has caught their click fraud, bans them, but all they do is get another account with someone elses name and address and gets more domain names and sites and they are back in business, temporary that it may be.

I think G needs to put all the information these crooks DO show, such as the check amount, the impressions, earnings, etc. from the images on that site and figure out exactly who this is and prosecute them. Make a complete example out of them and maybe this will stop these particular people anyway.

How dare they anyway! Google was started by two college students who obviously did something right, were at the right place, at the right time, whatever, but they made it not only BIG, but HUGE! Good for them! Most of us wish we were in their shoes or that our businesses would grow that big. No matter what some people think of G or whatever shortcomings G has, (as we all do and all companies do), it is ridiculous for some crook who thinks they can just take the lazy way out, by committing Fraud against Google AND it's advertisers, then use that stolen money to buy Google stock!

Sorry for the burst of anger, but this kind of crap really makes me angry!

martinibuster

9:51 pm on Sep 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Oh wait, one of the letters was sent to Dr. Andreas Bichlbauer of Yes Men [imdb.com] fame ("Changing the world one prank at a time"). These guys are pranksters!

These were the guys who purchased hundreds of GI Joe and Barbie Dolls, exchanged their voice boxes, then planted them onto store shelves during the Christmas season. So when a kid pulled the string on the back of a GI Joe, a woman's voice exclaimed, "Let's go shopping!"

They later bought an expired WTO domain name or one that was similar and proceeded to pretend they were from the WTO and even accepted speaking engagements around the world.

In one speaking engagement that they filmed, they promoted slave labor as inefficient and proclaimed that by employing third world people at ridiculously low wages while giving them the illusion that they were personally and politically free, they would have a higher productivity rate.

From a synopsis by Roger Ebert:

The film shows another fake lecture, before a group of New York students. At this one, McDonald's hamburgers are passed out, and the students chow down as the fake speaker laments the fact that the human body is inefficient in processing food. In fact, 90 percent of all the calories we eat are eliminated by the body. The challenge, they're told, "is to recycle post-consumer waste into fast food. A single hamburger can be eaten 10 times!"

The students... don't just sit there. They are outraged -- which means, however, that they took the speech seriously.

These were, of course, put ons. What was hilarious was that no matter how outrageous their suggesetions, they kept getting applauded. These guys even appeared on CNN impersonating WTO officials, spouting outrageous plans for global corporate domination through techniques such as selling political votes for real money, etc.

Andreals

11:18 pm on Sep 5, 2006 (gmt 0)



They call themselves "artists" because it sounds cooler than "vandals." They call their acts "pranks" because it sounds cooler than "crimes."

GoldenHammer

3:10 am on Sep 6, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



This is a dream .... :P

john5000

4:30 am on Sep 6, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



"So when a kid pulled the string on the back of a GI Joe, a woman's voice exclaimed, "Let's go shopping!"

hehe, thats funny :-)
reminds me of when i was a kid, my friends and i would go out late at night and swap patio plants between adjacent houses.