Yesterday Lawrence Lee emailed me and told me that the Google AdSense terms of service had changed, but he hadn’t noticed the change that had been made. As it turns out, the change was to add a clause prohibiting people who agree to the new terms from discussing them publicly. Google is one of those companies that I can say has improved my quality of life. They’ve done a number of really great things for the Internet and Web in general, not just by providing great search services but by rescuing the Usenet archive from deja.com and providing Google News, which is just a fantastic service. That said, it seems like some people inside Google are making some bad decisions for their brand and for their customers. More transparency, please.