It looks like Google gave $6 million in free advertising to the Church of
Scientology
Jim Edwards ("Business Insider," January 6, 2016)
In 2014, Google gave $6 million in free advertising to the Church of
Scientology, an activist for the church has claimed. Few people noticed the
move
at the time: The information resurfaced a few days ago on Hacker News, a
technology news aggregator, under a headline that said, “Scientology says it’
s received $5.7M from Google in ad grants.”
That headline referred to a story from September 2014 by Tony Ortega, the
independent journalist and former editor of the Village Voice. Ortega wrote:
At a $100 per person event held in the San Fernando Valley on September 6,
about 500 Scientologists were told, among other things, that Google has
approved advertising grants totaling $5.7 million for Scientology churches
around the country.
Google was not able to comment when reached by Business Insider, due to
staff being away on seasonal holidays.
A spokesperson for Scientology told us, “According to its website, Google
works with more than 20,000 nonprofits in over 50 countries. Unlike Tony
Ortega and others pushing this story, Google is not bigoted or prejudiced
against any religion.”
It is likely that the free advertising came from the Google Ad Grant
programme, which provides free advertising for non-profit organisations and
charities. You can see more about Google’s ad programme for non-profits here
and
the criteria for eligibility here.
The Church of Scientology was officially recognised as a tax-exempt
religion by the US IRS in 1993, in a controversial decision that came after a
years-long campaign of personal attacks on IRS employees, according to The New
York Times. Until then, American court rulings had dismissed the idea that
Scientology was a real religion, citing ‘‘the commercial character of much
of Scientology,” its ”virtually incomprehensible financial procedures”
and its ”scripturally based hostility to taxation.”
Following the IRS decision, Google may have felt it was not appropriate to
distinguish between one officially recognised church and another.
Ortega’s information came from a transcript of a video of a Scientology
fundraising meeting in the San Fernando Valley. The speaker was Brandy
Harrison, Scientology’s “Building Expansion Director Int.” She said:
In the Bay Area a representative of Google was introduced to Scientology
and our 4th dynamic campaigns through the Stevens Creek Ideal Org. This
representative connected us up with the department responsible for non-profit
advertisements. And as a result, Google awarded us a $10,000-a-month grant
for free online advertising.
But that’s not all because Google looked into the responses that we were
getting from this advertisement, and they increased that grant to the Truth
About Drugs and Way to Happiness campaigns, to $40,000 a month.
But that’s not all. The second man, now with established Google teams
solely for the Church of Scientology, suggested that we might want to extend
the
same grants to some of our class v orgs around the world. We applied, and
now today, every ideal org in the United States has $10,000 a month of free
online advertising.
[Crowd: wild applause]
In fact, in total so far, we have had $5.7 million in Google grants already
approved for our 4th dynamic campaigns in United States ideal orgs.
The $5.7 million claim ought to be taken with a pinch of salt. Former
Scientologists say many claims the church makes about its size and success are
hugely exaggerated. (For instance, the church has claimed it has about 8
million members but surveys suggest there only around 55,000 in the US.)
It is not the first time Scientology has taken advantage of policies that
Google extends to all. In 2002, CNET reported that Google removed search
result links to the website Xenu.net, which publishes news and criticism of
the church. The takedown happened because the church made a Digital
Millennium Copyright Act request, citing Xenu.net’s publication of its
internal
materials, which Scientology has copyright over
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