The reason is because I didn't catch the other users. Or their infraction isn't as bad.
While I feel bad for the knife company, I also know dealing with user-generated content (like these ads) is hard.
That's your reason, not Google's. Google knows full well who is bidding on what keyword. Are you suggesting they are under-staffed, under budgeted or overwhelmed in their task of keeping AdWords clean? I'm not buying it. Google has the resources to evenly apply guidelines, they're not a one-man show who's too busy to squash out violators.
Of course they are overwhelmed by the taks of keeping AdWords clean, just like Apple is overwhelmed by the task of timely approving apps for App Store, despite having more money than god and the number of AdWord ads submitted to Google is several orders of magnitude greater than number of Apps submitted to Apple.
Processes that involve humans are inherently non-scalable and determining whether an ad crosses the line of acceptable usage is a human task.
And humans have different opinions so there will never be "evenly applying guidelines", not for google ads, not for App Store apps. The only time 3 people have exactly the same opinion is when 2 of them are dead.
"We'd rather discuss this on the phone," he said.
"What's up?"
"We can approve your app, but can you please remove all references to midgets touching themselves, first?"
Would've paid to have seen that in writing.
Uh, what? Where does it state that the ads are user generated?
If there was some small company that got away with it, you might be right. But the issue here isn't Walmart's actions going unnoticed.
That's not really an excuse because no one forces Google to be in the user generated ad business. They want money from advertisers so they should do all they can to offer the best service possible.
"no one forces you to do X" argument cuts both ways?