Earlier this morning, I talked about the changes Google had made to their AdSense Program Policy page.  In particular, I was most interested in the change to how Google permits AdSense ads to run in conjunction with advertisements from other programs.

Basically, any other advertisements on your site must be changed to look completely different from the AdSense ads you're currently running.  And now it doesn't matter if the ads are rotating out on the same page or appearing on totally different pages of your site.  Bottom line:  nothing that remotely resembles an AdSense ad can appear anywhere on your site.

I figured I wouldn't be the only person to write about the change, so I've intentionally waited until later in the day to get the news time to spread.  A quick blog search later and I've found several other opinions on the change:

Jeremy Schoemaker of ShoeMoney.com had this to say:

This REALLY surprises me.  Maybe next Google will come out with a TOS change that if you run anything but Adsense you will be desisted from the Google search engine. Ya its that bad.

Come on.  Are you REALLY surprised?  With all of the other things Google has been pulling lately?  I don't see how this change could come as a shock for anyone.

Evan Roberts of Marketing Shift had this to say:

So while people around the blogosphere will talk about the impact the changes will have on you and me, keep in mind, that unless this is the rare time where Google really wants to do the right thing, rather than the profit inflating thing, you and I will be just fine the way we are.

Roberts thinks nothing will change because of Google's laissez faire attitude toward the majority of sites that violate its AdSense policies.  Do you agree?  Is Google so used to turning a blind eye to scraper sites and splogs that it'll never actually enforce this new condition?

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger thinks some publishers will drop AdSense over the change:

I’ve already heard from a number of publishers that if given the choice between AdSense and YPN that they’ll jump to YPN because of the less stringent requirements - this change has put one too many hoops to jump through in front of some publishers.

This would actually surprise me a little.  The whole purpose in running ads on a website is to make money off the site.  For the majority of sites, AdSense makes them more money.  If they have to drop an advertising program, I'd assume most would drop YPN:  they still don't have to jump through any hoops and they get to keep the program that makes them the most money.  We'll have to see.

Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped actually sees the change as a loosening of the strings:

A lot of the changes are just clarifying the old text by removing some overly verbose stuff. There’s no crucial changes to the March 2006 version, but with the rewording, Google partly loosens some control over how webmasters may display Google ads.

For example, the old version told you it’s not permitted to have “Google ads … to be published on web pages that also contain what could be considered competing ads or services,” whereas the new version emphasizes that it’s just not OK to “use the same layout and colors as the Google ads.

Here we have a completely different take on the changes than just about everywhere else on the web.  Like most texts, Google's AdSense policy page is probably open for interpretation.  But even when someone challenges Lenssen's take on the situation in a comment, he holds on to his position.

John Chow at JohnChow.com had this to say:

It looks like Google is making it harder for publishers to run both AdSense and YPN on the same site. They are forcing you to change the color of the YPN ads so they don’t look like Google ads. If you wish to continue using both, not only must the YPN ads never appear on a page with a Google ad, but the YPN ad’s color scheme must be completely different - I guess you can have blended Google ads and YPN ads that stand out like a sore thumb! Who is going to do that?

I agree, John.  Who is going to do that?  Few people, if any.  And that's exactly what Google is banking on.

Finally, for a complete run-down of all the changes and several posts of information about the changes, check out Jennifer Slegg's JenSense for full coverage.  Slegg has contacted Google and expects a reply.  I guess we'll wait and see what they have to say about the recent change.

So now you've seen what others in the blogosphere have to say.  You've seen what I have to say about it.

What do you think about the change?