BP Buys "Oil Spill" Search Term 439
technology_dude found an unsurprising but amusing little story that BP is buying keywords on Google and Yahoo for things like "Oil Spill" to help spin some damage control. I guess if you can't plug your spill, the least you can do is try to clog the flow of information.
have they bought "Beyond Pitiful" yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
how about they concentrate their efforts a mile down instead?
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Before you know it they'll buy other applicable terms like "criminal negligence" as well.
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Don't give them ideas.
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It's all about the publicity.
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...
Right?
Re:have they bought "Beyond Pitiful" yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good question. I mean, I hear that the janitors are still cleaning the toilets in BP headquarters! Where are their priorities?!
Seriously, they're a big company, they can focus on more than one thing at a time... It's like the Mythical Man-Month -- Just throwing resources at the problem isn't necessarily going to make it better, and could well make it worse.
Re:have they bought "Beyond Pitiful" yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not that they're doing more than one thing at a time, it's that they're trying to get the top results for "oil spill" so that real news are pushed down the list of results.
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It's not like anybody is going to confuse a site on bp.com with real news.
Probably the reason is that reporting of the oil spill cleanup efforts are riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods. I was reading several news organizations reports on the "top hat" approach a month or so ago and the amount of variability was insane, given that all they had to do was accurately re-print what BP Engineering had published. Some papers actually claimed it was "ice" clogging up the device for goodness sake.
People like to
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People reading newspapers don't know what methyl hydrates and clathrates are. Ice is a reasonable description for something that is liquid under STP, but solid at the bottom of the ocean.
Re:have they bought "Beyond Pitiful" yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
If by "real news" you mean "more media hype" then yes. We get it - the oil spill is an environmental disaster. It's bad for BP, it's really bad for fisherman in the Gulf, and it's generally bad for the economy in all the Gulf states, and it's definitely bad for the marine ecosystem.
BP has already suffered a near crippling blow. They have lost *100 billion* dollars in market cap. The CEO is going to be toast along with quite a few other people as soon as they have the situation calmed down - the board just doesn't want to toast him until things quiet down a bit. The other companies involved, Transocean, Andarko, etc. have suffered proportionally similar blows, accounting for 10s of billions of dollars in additional market cap wiped out.
And the sad thing is that the "punish BP" bloodlust is just going to result in thousands of decent Americans who work in the energy industry losing jobs in the inevitable restructurings that will come, and those jobs will end up going elsewhere, since we still will be consuming the oil here.
The only worse penalty BP as a corporate organization could pay at this point is a firesale takeover (because their successor will have to eat the huge contingent liability here). If somebody or somebodies at BP were negligent or actively broke safety regulations, then by all means, they should be criminally prosecuted for their actions. Top execs will already pay the price when they get the boot from their cushy jobs for the poor oversight they have exercised. If they did something criminal, they should be prosecuted too.
But this ... obsession ... with personalizing "BP" as some sort of entity that has committed an evil act that we can "punish" in any way further than has already been done is baffling to me. People - it's *been* punished. There are a bunch of marketing and PR weenies on staff at BP and they are just trying to do their jobs here. There's nothing wrong with them promoting the site they put up as a source of information for the public about the oil spill.
What's more, at this point, more economic damage is actually being done by media hype than by oil itself. The damage to the Florida tourism industry isn't being caused by a few tar balls that washed up, it's being caused by panicked morons canceling their vacations because of what they saw on the news. While I'm all for BP and friends covering the costs of actual damage from their oil spill, I don't think it's reasonable to hold anybody other than the media accountable for the damage from their hype machine, and I can't blame BP's PR people for trying to do what they can to get their side of the story out there (as long as they aren't simply lying about it).
Re:have they bought "Beyond Pitiful" yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
BP has already suffered a near crippling blow. They have lost *100 billion* dollars in market cap. ... 10s of billions of dollars in additional market cap wiped out.
Oh noes, not market cap! That's the thing about market cap -- it can be wiped out instantly, but it can come back too, and the only people who lose anything are the ones who sold while it was down. If BP was planning on buying out a smaller oil company using shares of their stock, well, now would be a bad time to do that. Oh noes!
In the meantime, BP continues to make real profits to the tune of tens of millions per day.
I'm not saying it's not a blow, but it's hardly crippling. Companies can continue to operate and make substantial profits even after tremendous stock price drops. And if BP does continue to make money, then their stock price will recover.
And the sad thing is that the "punish BP" bloodlust is just going to result in thousands of decent Americans who work in the energy industry losing jobs in the inevitable restructurings that will come, and those jobs will end up going elsewhere, since we still will be consuming the oil here.
It's an odd mentality, where the cause-and-effect here wouldn't be the obvious "Executive negligence in their company losing many jobs", but rather "the public caring that the executives cut corners and ignored signs because it would cost time and thus money resulted in this disaster, and subsequent job loss".
Yes, obviously the solution is that we should not care!
No. If people attributed cause and effect correctly, maybe we'd get some real change around here.
Top execs will already pay the price when they get the boot from their cushy jobs for the poor oversight they have exercised. If they did something criminal, they should be prosecuted too.
Oh noes they'll be fired from their cushy jobs! They might have to lay low living off their scant millions for a while before getting a cushy VP job somewhere else because the last thing the incestuous network of corporate executives and board members want is to raise standards.
Nothing short of criminal prosecution will be any kind of real punishment. I'm not holding my breath on the end result, but at least one thing is going right.
But this ... obsession ... with personalizing "BP" as some sort of entity that has committed an evil act that we can "punish" in any way further than has already been done is baffling to me. People - it's *been* punished.
Yeah, by only making half as much net profit -- estimates of BP's efforts at cleanup and stopping the leak per day are about half of their net profit per day.
Oh, the punishment! Their Q2 and Q3 earnings statements will be less glowing! They may be penalized in the market, until the expected profits return! Please. Call me when they go into the red, even for a single quarter.
By the way, the obsession with personalizing a corporation as some sort of entity unto itself has been the obsession of the corporate executives since early last century. Is it any wonder that we have bought into the delusion that "BP" can do anything on its own? "Corporate personhood" is their baby.
If you want to end that delusion, I'm all for it. But realize that the executives themselves are on the other side of this one from you, as is for that matter the law.
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Nice rant. I'll only bother with addressing the parts with content.
It's an odd mentality, where the cause-and-effect here wouldn't be the obvious "Executive negligence in their company losing many jobs", but rather "the public caring that the executives cut corners and ignored signs because it would cost time and thus money resulted in this disaster, and subsequent job loss".
I don't know how you got this from what I said. I never suggested that the public caring about the environment is to blame for lost
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Top execs will already pay the price when they get the boot from their cushy jobs for the poor oversight they have exercised.
Yeah, where's the sympathy for those poor executives. How will Tony Hayward survive without his 2.5 million pound compensation package? If he gets fired and can't find another job, he might have to live in only semi-luxury for the rest of his life! The horror!
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No they have not been punished. The company remains practically unscathed. The notional stock value has not impacted their profits. They're still raking in money hand over fist. At their profit margins the cost of this spill won't make any serious dent. And even if it did, they'll pull an Exxon-Valdez and tie up any judgment in court for so long that they pay a fraction of what they should.
They have spent $1.25B. The market estimates that the total cost to BP of this fiasco will be around $100B. Now, you
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It's like the Mythical Man-Month -- Just throwing resources at the problem isn't necessarily going to make it better, and could well make it worse.
I'm not sure about that. While Brooks was talking about software and computer hardware engineers, I'm sure you weren't literally talking about plugging the hole with BP engineers. It would be more logical to use BP executives, since they know more about oil flow than computer nerds. Just a hypothesis to test: We would have to actually try stuffing the pipe with BP executives to see if that would stop the flow. And unlike Brooks's theory, I suspect using more BP executives would improve improve the pipe some
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They already tried that - remember the 'junk shot'? They even let the execs bring their golf stuff along.
Re:have they bought "Beyond Pitiful" yet? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:have they bought "Beyond Pitiful" yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oddly, the situations is somewhat more complex than the army of armchair deep sea drilling experts suspect. LMAO @ "... lower a large cork ..."! You'll be suggesting they just put a tray under the sump plug and drain it from there next!
Anyone who honestly thinks BP isn't doing E V E R Y T H I N G in its power to stem the flow is a fool. Apart from the pollution considerations, the bad PR, and of course not forgetting the clamour from the large cork manufactures now wanting a slice of the action, if they're now pulling 10000 barrels a day from that well and a barrel runs at around 70 bucks ... well, I'd say you do the math(s) but someone might suggest I lower a cork on it so I'll do it for ya - $700000! ... why dontcha just lower a large cork BP? Eh? Why dontcha?". And people cheering when buffoons suggest that the whole company should concentrate their efforts a mile down instead - does he expect every PA, secretary, programmer, lorry driver, pump attendant, etc, to all be controlling their own ROV at the site?
That they are also trying to stem the flow of bad publicity is totally understandable too, because people keep posting asshat ideas like "lower a large cork" and all the numbnuts dolts read that and nod saying, "yer
Now I'm not saying BP are squeaky clean in this - my guess is that BP suspect that capping the well is nigh on impossible without the relief wells easing the pressure though obviously they'll keep trying - but to think they don't want to stop the oil flow is frankly as ludicrous a concept as having every BP employee lowering their very own large cork!
As Fnkmaster (89084) [slashdot.org] wrote: (on Tuesday June 08, @01:49PM (#32499016)) ... the "punish BP" bloodlust ... is crazy when so many Americans work in the industry as all you're doing is shooting yourselves in the foot! If BP doesn't do the deep drilling someone else will and maybe the next company to do it won't be hiring so many Americans and pumping so much money into the US economy?
Well, almost everything... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who honestly thinks BP isn't doing E V E R Y T H I N G in its power to stem the flow is a fool.
I believe that BP has every incentive to stop the leak.
I also believe BP has every incentive to do so as cheaply as possible. For instance, they originally wanted to only drill one relief well [yahoo.com] until Congress insisted they start on another one. Why? Well because a relief well is not a guaranteed fixe [salon.com]. Sometimes the first one you drill doesn't do much, assuming you even succeed in hitting the foot-wide hole with the other foot-wide hole you're drilling at an angle through miles of rock.
I am not about to second-guess the engineers who are busting their ass working on fixes. I fully realize that what they are trying to do is exceedingly difficult -- I mean, that's part of why it's such a big problem. However that also applies to the relief wells. With the problems that keep coming up in all the other attempted solutions, just assuming that a single relief well will work on the first try seems ludicrous. Could the extra cost possibly outweigh the impact if the relief well fails and oil spews until they can go through the whole process of drilling another? Could you, as an engineer, justify that lack of redundancy when solving a problem of this magnitude?
But those decisions aren't made by engineers. Engineers quantify the risks as best they can, and executives make the decision off the summary middle management hands them. For them, maybe the cost vs risk works out? Maybe a mentality that you cut corners and do the minimum (or less) and just hope things work out is so entrenched that they would still try it even after things had already failed to work out?
And not that I don't think their Top Kill attempt was anything but sincere, but that's exactly why it strikes me as odd that you'd mention that $700000/day figure for siphoning oil as some kind of incentive for plugging the well. When they really fix the well it won't be usable anymore. So no more oil. Which gives them the opposite incentive. Again, this is just the thought train your observation led me down.
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How exactly can the PR and marketing department assist a mile underwater? Answer, they can't. BP has to survive as a company in order to be able to fix the problem and make amends. They could go bust, but how would that help anyone?
Re:have they bought "Beyond Pitiful" yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly can the PR and marketing department assist a mile underwater?
use their bodies to plug up the well?
Honestly it's the best use for marketing and PR people....
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Or do you prefer to get a massive amount of hate webpages from bloggers that would actually do no difference to the actual problem?
Who Cares (Score:2)
At this point does BP actually think they can buy their way out of this with good PR?
Re:Who Cares (Score:5, Insightful)
BP obviously wants to continue operating and overcome this disaster. Regardless of what other actions they take, do you think that is possible WITHOUT trying to boost their image through PR?
Re:Who Cares (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm saying at this point I don't think they can boost their image. Wasting money on PR seems like throwing money down the toilet. There's a point at which you're so reviled that any attempt to make yourself look less despicable only feeds into the negative view the public has of you.
Re:Who Cares (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who Cares (Score:4, Insightful)
They have tried to minimize the spill. They're estimates were bullshit. They're claim that there were no plumes is bullshit. Their claim that they're fully funding the cleanup is bullshit. They got called out very publicly by a group of Gulf coast mayors who literally had to crash a press conference where their reps were coating themselves in all sorts of nauseating platitudes to reveal that BP hasn't even returned these guys' phone calls.
What BP should do is apologize about fifty times a day, do what it's claiming it's doing, stop trying to bullshit everyone about the extent of the damage, and goddamn well take what's coming to it. I mean, these are oil patch guys, but they're behaving like a bunch of stupid pissy prissies.
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There's a point at which you're so reviled that any attempt to make yourself look less despicable only feeds into the negative view the public has of you.
Damn, and I just ran out of mod points.
This is the feeling I and everyone I know gets when we see BP commercials about how they're fixing stuff. "STFU and get back to work." No one wants to hear BP talk about how hard they're working. The only thing anyone is interested in hearing is "The leak is plugged, the oil has been skimmed, and life is returning to normal." Anything else just backfires and makes BPs image worse.
If I were in BP's shoes, I'd buy ad space and show a live 30-second feed of the rovers, th
Re:Who Cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. It worked, for the most part, for Exxon and Union Carbide. They'll, probably, just try to play by the play-book those two companies used. History shows that the public has a short memory/attention span.
Re:Who Cares (Score:4, Interesting)
The Valdez incident was in a fairly unpopulated part of a state with a very small population. Union Carbide was in India, and thus not only a long way off, but impacting foreigners.
This is literally happening in a very populated, economically important region of the Continental United States. I mean, these people still talk about Hurricane Andrew, so no, I don't think they'll be forgetting how BP poisoned the Gulf Coast.
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Well of course we need oil. We need gold too, but would you just shrug your shoulders if they were mining it in your backyard and managed to poison your property with mercury? That we need various commodities doesn't mean that we should give companies free passes on damage.
I never understand the sort of equivocation posters like you put forth. What does that even mean? Oh well, we've got to put up with the destruction of economically important fisheries and tourist areas because WE NEED OIL! I mean, th
Re:Who Cares (Score:4, Interesting)
In order words, BP has almost 40x the incidents than all their competitors combined.
Re:Who Cares (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the public's relatively short attention span, and the fervor of the ostensibly-libertarian-but-basically-authoritarian-corporatist wing, which blithely asserts that any state interference in the sovereign right of corporations to do whatever the fuck they want, or even say mean things when the inevitable consequences occur, is socialist fascism; they may well be correct.
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I heard the other day again the ridiculous meme that "the Internet will always be free" and "you can't control information on the Internet". Wrong.
Since most people can't find information without a search engine they're only going to find the information that BP wants them to find.
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I just typed "gulf oil spill" in Google. What I came up with is three stories; one about Obama trying to deflect criticism about his handling of the spill, one about the confirmation of oil plumes (and once again BP is caught lying, BTW), and one about the fight to contain the oil spill to last months.
About the only really questionable one is a site obviously put up by BP called gulfoilspill.com, and it's a helluva laugh to read.
Google is not giving BP good PR. In fact, because of its news scanning, it's
Re:Who Cares (Score:5, Informative)
In the US. (Score:4, Informative)
If i google "oil spill" here (Netherlands) it does not show sponsered links.
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Also in Canada. Nothing on Google, but Yahoo has sponsored links.
Actually, that's surprisingly competent (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd have expected less of them... But I guess they're doing pretty well so far with their coverage on bp.com and using dispersants to keep most of the spill at depth and keeping away science vessels so they're free to misunderestimate the true magnitude.
Wonder what their PR budget is compared to their recovery budget.
Keeping Science Vessels Away (Score:2)
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You've obviously not been watching the last 20 to 30 years of military engagement. BP know exactly who owns the ocean - it's you who doesn't.
Surprisingly Competant for an Evil Villain (Score:5, Interesting)
But I guess they're doing pretty well so far with their coverage on bp.com and using dispersants to keep most of the spill at depth and keeping away science vessels so they're free to misunderestimate the true magnitude.
Science vessels? According to Newsweek, it's photographers and people looking to document the damage [newsweek.com] that BP is turning away. Now that's some unadulterated bullshit "damage control."
I heard on NPR that some people looking to investigate beaches were turned away by policeman and when they asked the policemen who was paying them to do that the policeman said they were off duty police officers employed by BP. I don't know if that's true or if the people are lying but the stinks worse than crude if it's the truth and I hope the US AG criminal investigation [washingtonpost.com] gets to the bottom of that.
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Actually here is the NOTAM
http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_0_2957.html#restrictions [faa.gov]
Yep flight restrictions from surface to 3000 ft.
But dudes that is what telephoto lenses are for.
3000 ft isn't that bad of a restriction but it is still a restriction.
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I heard on NPR that some people looking to investigate beaches were turned away by policeman and when they asked the policemen who was paying them to do that the policeman said they were off duty police officers employed by BP. I don't know if that's true ...
A friend of mine said BP wanted to use mashed up baby dolphins to try and plug the leak, but I don't know if it's true ...
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I don't really have a problem with that, actually, so long as they hold true to their promise to pay for cleanup and lost business for those whose livelihood they've disrupted.
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The problem is that they're minimizing basically took a spill that apparently is puking out 12,000 to 20,000 barrels a day and claimed it was only 5,000 (we know now that they have it partially contained that the spill was at least over twice as much per day as they were claiming). They also, even as late as a week ago, were claiming that there was no evidence for vast plumes, and that too has been falsified.
BP has pretty much lied about everything from the very beginning. I can't see at this point how th
It may seem egregious and offensive (Score:5, Insightful)
but this really isn't news. Money has a voice. More money has a louder voice. Lots of money can shout out all other voices.
I hope the search providers enjoy their windfall. I hope the states, the Feds, and the individual victims of this disaster take careful note of how much money is being spent on non-productive spin control, rather than actually fixing the problem and cleaning up the aftermath.
Well said. (Score:2)
I share your optimism. I hope that the victims never tire of reminding us what happened in the Gulf. We as a nation have a pretty short attention span.
Re:It may seem egregious and offensive (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to even ask but have you gone to the site they linked to their ad? http://www.bp.com/bodycopyarticle.do?categoryId=1&contentId=7052055&nicam=USCSBaselineCrisis&nisrc=Google&nigrp=Non_Branded_Crisis_Management-_General&niadv=General&nipkw=oil_spill [bp.com]
It isn't a terrible site. It is clearly marked as a BP site as well.
No Astroturfing just a site about what they are doing.
Totally expected and frankly people would be screaming if they had not done it.
They also have live feeds from the ROVs which seems pretty cool
This is so not a story but hey what do you expect?
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They also have live feeds from the ROVs which seems pretty cool
They have those feeds because the government forced them to!. BP wasn't going to provide those feeds, it took an explicit order by the US government to achieve this "kindness".
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If anything, every dime they put toward stupid commercials and other PR stunts should be matched (by them) and put into a "Future of the Gulf Coast" fund where it can be used solely for long term needs to be determined at a later date. Then, in 10 years when the fisheries still are in a terrible state and BP is in a legal battle over how the cleanup was handled and what government did what without BPs consent they will have a little money to put toward rebuilding the ecology of the coast.
Can't Even Boycott the Bastards (Score:3, Insightful)
What can I do? Write my senator demanding what exactly?
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Re:Can't Even Boycott the Bastards (Score:5, Interesting)
What can I do?
Go to google, search for 'oil spill', and click on all the ads. Each click costs them money, and I'm sure they're bidding high for placement.
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use less petrol/gas
take public transport
buy an electric car/hybrid
get on your bike
car share
move closer to work
use less petrol/gas
Re:Can't Even Boycott the Bastards (Score:4, Interesting)
Not pretty, but convincing enough of them to switch would be the real way to harm BP. Just boycotting BP stations is pretty much useless.
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Say what you will about BP's operations, but their corporate communications seem to be top-notch. Those folks are doing all the right things.
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The worst part of this oil spill is that you can't even boycott BP effectively without also boycotting the local gas station owner and the whole refinery chain. Say that this shady keyword purchasing damage control made you so upset that you went down and picketed the BP station in your neighborhood. Well, you might be affecting BP a little but you're having a much larger impact on the guy who owns that station. A huge impact if you're there all day appealing to people's empathy for the Gulf. What can I do? Write my senator demanding what exactly?
I don't know what the BP stations look like in your area, but around here they're as dirty and sleazy as they get. I didn't like getting gas there before the spill.
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Oh, come'on, what a lame argument. Your local gas station owner could always switch companies (especially if he's environmentally responsible). Also, he's probably a millionaire and can afford to lose some business. Finally, even if all of us "morally outraged" people quit buying BP gas, we're such a small segment of the overall population they'd only see a small dip in their profits anyways. Basically, you're demonstrating the classic example in psychology of a narcissistic personality, "If I stop buyi
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"Oh, come'on, what a lame argument. Your local gas station owner could always switch companies (especially if he's environmentally responsible). Also, he's probably a millionaire and can afford to lose some business"
You're missing the point: Oil is fungible and is traded several steps up the supply chain from you buying gas. You cannot affect demand for BP oil. When GP says you'll have a minimal impact on BP, he's wrong; in fact you'll have none at all.
If your local station owner switched to a different
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The worst part of this oil spill is that you can't even boycott BP effectively without also boycotting the local gas station owner and the whole refinery chain. Say that this shady keyword purchasing damage control made you so upset that you went down and picketed the BP station in your neighborhood. Well, you might be affecting BP a little but you're having a much larger impact on the guy who owns that station. A huge impact if you're there all day appealing to people's empathy for the Gulf.
What can I do? Write my senator demanding what exactly?
Actually, odds are that none of the gas you are buying at a BP station actually came from BP. The stuff all comes from the same local distributors who pass it back and forth like it's water. Local stations (none of which in the US are actually owned by BP) just pay for the right to use the name. To boycott BP you'd need to track their shipments in and out of places and then find out where things went. Unless the local distributors boycott BP (not likely) there isn't anything you'll be able to do as a c
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Tell your senator that you want more transportation options besides automobiles.
Re:Can't Even Boycott the Bastards (Score:4, Informative)
Tell your senator that you want more transportation options besides automobiles
Yes, because there aren't enough empty buses and light rail trains rumbling around town.
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Why boycott BP? Do you think the other oil companies would do anything differently? Do you think "I'll buy from those nice ExxonMobil people because they care far more about the environment than profit"?
It's a bit like boycotting a particular hard disk manufacturer because one of your drives failed. The exact same thing would happen with any other manufacturer so there's no point boycotting one when they're all the same.
That is, of course, unless we're talking bout Samsung. They really do make the most
Brings a tear to my eye... (Score:4, Funny)
Suddenly I'm proud to be British. God save the Queen!
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Where's The Doctor when you need him?
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Time can be rewritten. He'll come back. Fix deepwater horizon, prevent the disaster and then none of this thread would have ever existed. I just wonder if my mod points would survive the change :)
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Obligatory twitter quote (Score:4, Funny)
@BPGlobalPR
By the way, we made it so if you google image search "oil spill" or "bp" you'll see some great celeb sideboob pics. #bpcares
Ah, the fun we poke.
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Oily breasts ? Finally, something exciting !
Not necessary.... (Score:2)
By the way, we made it so if you google image search "oil spill" or "bp" you'll see some great celeb sideboob pics. #bpcares
BP - "One of the World Leaders in Oil Spills" (Score:4, Funny)
BP - "One of the World Leaders in Oil Spills and Public Relations Damage Control"
Have you spilled oil today? Our P.R. team can help!
So... I can transfer money from BP to Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell yeah!
Re:So... I can transfer money from BP to Google? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now what we need is a press release from Google saying that all revenue generated from the BP add goes towards helping clean the spillage.
Then we can just sit back while BP goes bankrupt (though I suspect there's an upper limit to the cost of the add...)
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No it wouldn't. BP contracted with Google for visibility and clicks. Google contracted with BP for payment. BP gets its visibility and clicks, and Google gets its payment.
It's no business of BP's how Google drives traffic to BP or what Google does with the money, unless the contract itself contains limitations on those things.
Moral: when selling your soul, make sure you read what you sign.
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I've tried to get a sponsored link a few times just to do this and I can't get one. Where's my advertising?!
Speaking of which... (Score:4, Funny)
Related: http://digg.com/comedy/Massive_Flow_Of_Bull****_Continues_To_Gush_From_BP [digg.com]
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I get 2 sponsored links right now (Score:5, Informative)
www.BP.com/OilSpillNews [bp.com] "Info about the Gulf of Mexico Spill Learn More about How BP is Helping."
The other is:
Tar Ball Burner(tm) [sandman.com] "Collect free tar balls from beaches and turn them into unleaded gas!"
Please slashdot both of them.
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OMG lol.
You almost had me, then I saw this on the side of the page almost at the bottom:
Almost every home in Tokyo uses an Electronic Bidet to spray water at their butt.
Why don't we?
As if that weren't enough, right after it there's an ad for an $800 Ethernet tap...
Ha, jokes on them (Score:4, Insightful)
Clog the flow of information? (Score:4, Informative)
Relax, dude, I'm pretty sure we can all find plenty of things to blame BP for without pretending that buying keyword impressions is somehow harmful.
Go google "oil spill". Sure enough, the top sponsored link will be the BP oil spill site. The other sponsored link will be... yet another partison point of view from someone who was willing to pay to get a message out. That's what sponsored links are.
Right below them - right where they always are - you still find the real search results. How that squares with the flow of information being "clogged" is beyond me.
I'd find more to complain about if BP wasn't trying to present a strong media presence. You know, saying "I'd like my life back" or something like that.
Somebody should buy BP (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The only problem is that there's no good solution here. BP's people aren't the only ones trying to stop the leak, you've got engineers from all of the big companies working on this. They all see the damage that this spill is doing to their industry and want it stopped. The point is that nobody knows how to stop this, short of relief wells. There's already a ton of uncertainty about how much oil has leaked, how much more is going to leak, what's going to happen to all that oil under the water, what happens w
How much does it cost BP when I click their link? (Score:2)
Cause I have a mouse, here, and I could click it a LOT.
This Should Be A Fun Thread (Score:2)
This should be fun. =)
Its pretty straightforward actually (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Like "it's only leaking 5,000 barrels a day" or "there is no evidence for oil plumes".
Oh wait, that was BP. What were you saying about disinformation, half truth and anecdotal evidence?
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Is this really news? (Score:2)
Cost them money!!! (Score:2)
Search for "Oil Spill" and then click on the ad, then close the browser...
Worked great for me (Score:2)
they've been spinning this all along (Score:2)
Why are we supposed to be angry again? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I have a friend who does affiliate marketing, and makes a lot of money off of people's dumb search habits, specifically their willingness to click sponsored links, believi
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Ah yes, the ol' "the media is evil vs. the just-a-little-evil-company/politician/organization".
Whatever the media has been doing, it's BP whose spinning is making things worse. They lied about the amount of oil leaking. They tried to deny there were oil plumes, basically calling a number of experts alarmists. They've bullshitted about the amount of aid they've been providing, the amount of work they've been doing on the cleanup.
BP isn't just "not perfect", it's a pack of self-serving liars who, on top of