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Update September 20th, 2024

The site sponsorship has been extended through December 31st.

Update on June 25th, 2024

The site sponsorship has been extended through September 30th.

Update on March 21, 2024

This site sponsorship has been extended through June 30th.

Update on January 24, 2024

This site sponsorship is now only visible to users in the US and Canada, due to the sponsor’s preference.

We're excited to announce that Google will be sponsoring Server Fault Stack Exchange beginning January 9th, going through March 31st. We wanted to give you a heads-up and walk you through what it will look like.

How and where will the sponsorship be displayed?

The sponsorship will be shown on the right side of the header at the top of the site in a manner that's similar to the mockup below:

image of Server Fault SE home page with Google Cloud sponsorship logo in top right

What else changes?

Nothing! Quoting from the original MSE announcement on sponsorships:

First — sponsors do not own these Q&A sites. Sponsors work alongside our communities who ultimately build these sites. Communities ask the questions; communities create the tags; communities conduct elections as they do now, and we are not renaming our current sites like a garish sport stadium to the highest bidder. Any ads a sponsor submits still have go through our crazy-strict ad editorial process… as it has always been. Companies do not have access to personal data, and all Q&A content remains irrevocably licensed under Creative Commons for sharing and attribution.

Sponsorships are a tool that our clients can use to let folks who would be interested in their products know about them.

What if I think I've found a design glitch/bug?

If something looks off, please report it as a bug so we can investigate and squash it.

That's it! If you have any other questions or concerns, please leave them as answers below.

And lastly, thank you. These types of partnerships help us bring more resources to our communities, and they wouldn't be possible without the work you've put into making this site successful.

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Question:

Will this effect the currently sponsored tags and if so, how?

And what about the related Google-* tags that are not sponsored (yet)?
Such as for example ?

On a different note

Sponsorship is nice but be aware that the issue already comes up frequently enough that I even have a default canned comment in my AutoReviewComments browser extension for Google customers that seem confused about what ServerFault can and can't/won't do for them:

Despite the fact Google sponsors and/or links here, ServerFault is not Google support. The ServerFault community can only help with on-topic questions and can't resolve billing issues, outages and similar problems. You get what you pay for and when you don't have a paid support plan you're mostly on your own. When you do have a paid support plan, please ask questions there: https://cloud.google.com/support/docs/manage-cases

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    The site sponsorship has no effect on sponsored tags. Similarly, it has no effect on what is considered on or off topic for a site. We do understand how the sponsorship could cause some confusion for users who may already be unclear on the scope of the site. You can feel free to link them to this post (or add it to your canned response) if that could help to clarify things for them.
    – Sasha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 4 at 16:31
  • @Sasha thanks for the clarification
    – HBruijn
    Commented Jan 6 at 19:53

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