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Sponsored searches point to Virginia tragedy

Harry Fuller Executive editor, CNET News.com
Harry Fuller escaped from television work to be executive editor at CNET News.com.
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Harry Fuller

It's been a day since a gunman killed more than 30 people at Virginia Tech. And we're back to business as usual online.

Search for "Virginia shooting" on Google, and you'll see paid sponsorship links for The New York Times and the TV program Inside Edition. When I searched for "Virginia tech shooting" there were sponsored links for the Washington Post and British site TheFirstPost.

Over on Yahoo "Virginia shooting" search results are brought to you by The New York Times and DeskTopAlert. There was no sponsor for "Virginia Tech shooting."

That's all probably the grisly result of some automated program that doesn't understand the very real, very human side of the tragedy, but still.

I had just enough intestinal fortitude to search Glock 19. Paid sponsors on Google results page: eBay and Shopping.com. The latter did a little bait and switch, wanting me to move up to the Glock 22.