Google lifts alcohol advertising ban

Search giant Google has announced it will lift its alcohol advertising ban in the UK from January of next year.

Britain will be the only country in the world to be exempt from the global ban on alcoholic spirits search term marketing.

The move follows Google´s decision to relax its ban on gambling by allowing companies to target web users in the UK.

Proposed guidelines on the marketing of spirits from Google, which were uncovered by Paid Content, stated: "Ads and sites promoting the direct sale of alcohol both online and offline will remain restricted as per current hard alcohol policy."

Google claimed the move was "a response to industry standards", Paid Content reported.

Meanwhile, Google engineers will be given less time to work on their own pet projects as the online advertising sector threatens to start declining, the Independent reports.

The company traditionally sets aside 20 per cent of its engineers time to developing their own ideas, according to the paper.