I found this C|Net News story a little disturbing (Search engines face drug test). Apparently, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) is meeting with search engine providers in order to encourage the search engines to "clean up" ads for prescription drugs - by running only ads from those certified by, surprise, the NABP. This seems to be yet another move by major companies to control search engine results to favor their interests, following in the wake of eBay (Google ads a threat to eBay trademark?) and Netflix (Trademarks cast shadow on paid search), not to mention countries like France setting some unfortunate trademark precedent (Google France fined for trademark violation).

Of course, this issue is a little more complicated, since there are safety issues involved. However, isn't that why we have an FDA? Well, yes we do, but the FTC sounds a warning note about private lawsuits:

"I'm not convinced that they [search engines] won't (face private lawsuits) if some minor purchases a controlled substance through facilities based on ads they've allowed to run," Cleland [the FTC's assistant director for the division of advertising practices] said."

No doubt some attorney will try to run with that ball, but we can only hope the lawsuit fails. After all, do we allow billboard owners to be sued when minors buy alcohol advertised on billboards?

Commercial speech, though subject to different levels of protection than other speech, is still important from a freedom of expression point of view. Advertising via search engines is going to be an important aspect of this speech on the internet. We should be concerned about how search engines restrict this form of speech.