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Australia's Bureau of Meteorology allowed to sling ads, but not politics

The most popular site on the dot-gov-au domain, the Bureau of Meteorology, has been okayed to start taking advertising – with some restrictions.

Australia's Senate has passed legislation formalising the decision, so long as the bureau doesn't take political advertisements, nor ads for gambling, alcohol, or - ahem - adult services.

Last year, the Bureau was okayed to spend money preparing its Website for advertising. That was followed by a trial that commenced in March 2013 to test the strategy.

(The Register would note that the trial seems to have been awfully quiet: as a regular, nay obsessive, user of the site, this author never noticed ads on the site.)

If it seems odd for a government web site to carry commercial ads, consider that the site is Australia's 42nd-most-popular, according to Alexa. That's even more popular than The Reg in Australia and only about 1300 slots below our global traffic.

The process began back in 2011, when a government review first suggested the advertising idea. With so many exclusions, Vulture South will be interested to hear suggestions from our commentards about which advertisements will help the BoM relieve its budget pressures... ®

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