Slashdot pointed me to this blog designed solely to maximize advertising income. Apparently its proprietor, Michael Buffington, designed the blog as an experiment. He spends about an hour a day culling links from Google News searches on asbestos, a topic he picked because of rumors of high click-through advertising rates on Google advertising.

He had heard that key terms, such as “asbestos” and “mesothelioma” lead to incredibly high click-through advertising rates — $15 and up to $100 per click. He had no interest in asbestos previously; he simply wanted to see if he could create a content site that would make money quickly.

Once the article was posted on Slashdot, sparks began to fly. Isn’t it immoral to make a blog solely designed to make money? Shouldn’t he just be writing about the things that actually interest him? Buffington argues that his site does provide a valuable service. He reads the articles himself and tries to link only to the ones offering new and valid information. And doesn’t Google do the same thing itself? A search on Google for asbestosis reveals ten “sponsored links” which take up more screen area than the actual search results.

Some of the commenters pointed out that Buffington may have already missed the rush: there are already many sites that attempt the same thing. Does that make him more or less “evil” than those who’ve thought of it first? And given this apparent cash grab, what happens to the real victims of asbestos poisoning? I wonder what it would be like wading through this sea of sharks if I was trying to get treatment for an asbestos-related condition, or find a lawyer to represent my family in an asbestos claim. Perhaps that’s the real wrong that’s being perpetrated here, and Michael Buffington isn’t the one we should be blaming.