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Posted: 6th March 2013

Google under fire for ivory adverts
Campaigners accuse Google of contributing to poaching

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has claimed that over 10,000 adverts for ivory products are running on Google's Japanese shopping site, and has called for their removal.

The claim was made at the meeting of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), which is currently taking place in Bangkok.

The EIA said they have been monitoring Japanese adverts for some time, looking for evidence of whale product promotion. The agency reported finding 1,400 of these types of adverts. When a similar search was carried out on Google's Japanese shopping site, however, the EIA say they found more than 10,000 ivory adverts.

Over 80 per cent of these were advertising "hanko", a Japanese name seal used to sign official documents. These are often inlaid with ivory lettering.

Campaigners say these adverts clash with Google's own policies, which prohibit the promotion of whale or elephant products. Further, the EIA has accused Google of contributing to elephant poaching, which is widespread across Africa.

Allan Thornton of the EIA said: “We were really shocked to be honest, to find that one of the world’s richest and [most] successful technology companies with such incredible resources had taken no action to enforce their own policies, especially given that elephants are being slaughtered across Africa to provide these trinkets for the public in Japan.”

Despite writing to Google on 22 February calling for the immediate removal of the ads, the EIA claim they are still up and running, and Google has not yet responded to the letter. A statement has however been issued by Google, confirming that adverts relating to endangered species are not permitted on their sites.

The statement reads: "Ads for products obtained from endangered or threatened species are not allowed on Google. As soon as we detect ads that violate our advertising policies, we remove them."

The internet has been blamed for boosting the ivory business. Another investigation last year by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), found 17,000 ivory products on sale on Chinese websites. The ivory trade is one of the key issues on the agenda for this meeting of Cites, which has seen representatives from all 178 member countries travel to Bangkok. 



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