Google Gets Greedy With Gurus

File under: The Siddhi of PR

More keyword fun at tribe.net:

It appears that someone at Google AdSense is selling guru names as keywords that link to offers that have very little to do with the man whose name they are using as bait. For instance, this:



Links to this:

When you click on the only link somewhat related to Swami Dayananda, you end up at the website of the University of Metaphysical Sciences, which appears to be something of a New Age™ diploma mill if you asked us. We couldn't find anything about Dayananda there, or on any of the other sites his name links to, like freegiftworld.com, dada-mobile.net, free-ringtones-now.net and latestringers.com.

We observed this phenomenon a few weeks ago when Google allowed someone to use the name of our lineage's founder, Ramakrishna, to sell "six easy steps to manifest wealth." It was Ramakrishna who famously took handfuls of dirt alternating with handfuls of money and threw them both into the Ganges.

Linking Ramakrishna to wealth lust was over the line even for us. You'd think some observant Hindus would get all up in arms over it, but we think we know why they haven't been. We wouldn't be surprised if it was Hindu folks themselves selling out their spiritual leaders past and present to make a buck for themselves. In any event, it's surely a sign of the times that this blog is itself a part of; the movement toward the normalization and humanization of self-realization and away from the deification of gurus and the other often all-to-human individuals who find themselves in that position.