Google has lost the most recent round of litigation over alleged abuse of sponsored search, the sale of keywords based on corporate trademarks, and misdirection. No, this decision does not change anything in Google’s business practices. It does not prove that Google did anything wrong. And it does not create financial liability for Google. It merely sends one case back to court for another trial. It should not send Google stock plummeting. But it does require that we in the online tech community think carefully and debate carefully about Google’s business model.
Some readers, and indeed some fellow bloggers, have complained that my calling sponsored search misdirection rather than advertising was outrageous, and that they have never heard anyone but me complain about it. The jury is, quite literally, still out on this one, but a recent appellate court ruling against Google suggests that the issue is still hotly debated in the courts, even if not quite as hotly as in the blogosphere. MediaPost reports the details:
A federal appellate court handed Google a defeat today in a trademark lawsuit stemming from AdWords ads. The 2nd Circuit ruled that allowing a trademark to trigger a search ad is a “use in commerce.”
The decision doesn’t mean that Google will ultimately lose the case. It also doesn’t stop Google or other search engines from allowing companies to use trademarks to trigger ads. But it makes doing so riskier: If those ads are found to confuse consumers, search engines could be on the hook for trademark infringement.
Here, Google was sued by computer repair shop Rescuecom for allowing rivals to appear as sponsored listings when consumers typed “rescuecom” into the query box.
The case (Rescuecom V. Google) has been public since the initial decision was reached in 2006 but it does not appear to have entered into our collective consciousness. Google is innocent until proven guilty and this latest decision does not prove it guilty of anything; it merely remands the case back to the lower court for reconsideration. But again, we in the online tech community need to understand how businesses are affected, positively and negatively, by Google and its use of its very considerable market power. The Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that there are freedom of speech issues, and others believe that sponsored search increases consumer choice by counter-balancing the power of the largest corporations. The issues surely are complex enough to demand our attention. The ruling is embedded below:
You are not the only one talking about it… you may recall the Louis Vuitton case in France.
http://news.cne..._3-6089307.html
“A French court of appeals on Wednesday affirmed a lower court ruling that Google infringed on Louis Vuitton’s trademark by selling search-related keyword advertising to competitors of the fashion company, Louis Vuitton said.
The Paris Court of Appeals ordered Google and its French subsidiary to pay $376,589 (300,000 euros) in damages for trademark counterfeiting, unfair competition and misleading advertising, a public relations company for the fashion company said…”
If you search “ford”, sponsored link will be “Jobs in ford” linking to a common job site. I am just too irritated. Also google makes corporates pay for traffic that should be naturally coming to them.
Whenever I browse with some net newbie, he/she clicks on Google sponsored links. It is daylight robbery.
These cases are weak attempts by advertisers to suppress their competition. It has nothing to to with misdirection.
Sponsored search results are no more “misdirection” than the other 9 organic search results on the search results page.
You miss the point (again) Eric. When you find a non-negligible amount of search engine users (NOT advertisers) that feel they are being “misdirected” by these results, then maybe you’ll have a story. In the meantime you simply come across as having some kind of deep resentment towards Google and/or online advertising.
Sorry. This one was as neutral as I could make it, sort of in response to the guys who seemed to think that I was the only one complaining. In particular, Danny argued that he had never heard a company complain. I suggested that I had. You’ll note I make no attempt to predict what the final outcome will be and I included both the freedom of speech argument (EFF) and increased consumer choice argument (Google itself). So … at least this time … cut me some slack. If you want a lengthy (off line) debate on what this actually costs all of us, or offers all of us, I’d be happy to do so. My own work gets better from the backlash. Thanks. But … actually … if they were weak attempts they would not have survived in court. More only if you want to continue.
No, Eric, I never said I’d not heard of a company complain. In fact, I said there have been several lawsuits over the issue — which is sort of the ultimate complaint.
What I said was that I have never heard of a company being told by Google itself that they had to buy their own trademark. That’s what you asserted — and it’s a different thing entirely.
Eric Clemons,
You seem to be Ok’ed or perhaps support statism. In my view, it should be intellectuals such as yourself that should champion property rights. You should have dig deep into this court case and rip through the violations of Google’s rights that restraint itself from what it can or can’t do with it’s search engine, ie, its own property.
Instead, you attempt to make it out that , we in the online tech community think carefully and debate carefully about Google’s business model. Who’s we professor? We have no business in trying to influence the way how Google conducts its operations nor the courts. The market will decide it for Google and not the courts. Try to think like an intellectual man and you should champion property rights and free enterprise.
Here are some quiz for you:
#1) Is Google has obligation under the law to index every page on the internet? If you think they do, then explain why on earth are they required by the law to do so? Take for instance about the French case mentioned above by DR:
A French court of appeals on Wednesday affirmed a lower court ruling that Google infringed on Louis Vuitton’s trademark by selling search-related keyword advertising to competitors of the fashion company, Louis Vuitton
If Google doesn’t want to index Louis Vuitton (the fashion company’s website), perhaps because they haven’t bought rights to those search-related advertising keyword, then why on earth is the law requiring them to do so, ie, must index those sites? Google has no legal obligation at all to index everything under the universe of the web. But of course statists such as yourself wouldn’t think that way, you will of course argue such as a typical academic that there is of course unfair competition, which you know that it is a violation of property rights (ie, Google’s rights) to be told by courts (law) that it should restraint itself from doing certain things in running its business.
Louis Vuitton (the fashion company’s website) has no right at all to take Google to court or demand that Google index its website. If Google decides to drop indexing Louis Vuitton (the fashion company ) , then that decision is entirely up to Google’s owners (and shareholders) and not the courts or Louis Vuitton.
When can you draw the line between right of a web site to be indexed by a private company’s search engine (property owner) and the right of the company (property owner) not to index everything and anything on the net, if they don’t wish to? Can you see a contradiction here? The answer is yes, and when you see that the law is contradicting itself , then you know it is because , the anti-trust law is itself contradictory and unconstitutional. High school kids will see this and understand the contradictory nature of the anti-trust law. In epistemology, when you have reached contradictory solutions, then you should check your premises. The law is misleadingly there to supposedly protect consumers over the rights of the property owners (Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc,…). That premise is wrong and if you think otherwise, then I suggest you buy the following excellent book (current top seller at Amazon) by :
Mark Levin, with title: “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto”.
Finally, Rescuecom should piss off and leave Google alone. This case is similar to the one from a few years back, SearchKing-vs-Google.
This has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with indexing. LV sued because google SOLD someone else placement based on a search of LV’s trademark.
If I search for Louis Vuitton and Google knowingly gives me Gucci instead, Google may be found guilty of misusing LV’s trademark by misleading me to click on Gucci. If LV doesn’t come up at the top when someone searches for them on google that’s something completely different.
It really pisses me off to find that when I search for my company on Google a competitor has purchased the adwords. Maybe we should sue (:
“weak attempts by advertisers to suppress their competition” – you’re kidding right?
Rescuecom have what should be a solid case. The organic search results are very unlikely to be links to their competition. Why should the PPC results be allowed to do that? If you were walking down the street thinking, “hey, I fancy a BK Whopper”, and Ronald McDonald jumps out, grabs you and manhandles you into McD’s to offer you a Big Mac you’re not going to be all that amused.
If someone searches for ‘Rescuecom’ then they’re looking for info on that company. If the organic results contain a side-by-side comparison of their and competitor services then that’s how the user can find out about the competitors. That page could even be on a competitor’s website. That’s what Google should be serving up, not allowing people to hijack other companies’ trademarks.
Before you criticise my stance, understand that I’ve had to deal with Google’s trademark infringement policy on Adwords in the past. It gets very annoying when you run an ad for a brand you sell and you get it taken down and have to get the trademark owner to confirm you’re allowed to advertise their products, but that’s how they protect their brand.
Do you own a brand? How would you like it if a competitor started using your brand name as a keyword?
Honestly, these big corporations are just upset because the internet is the only place that there isn’t control over what people say. They just need to realize that “misdirection” as they call it, it going to happen, just as its been happening for years by Blackhat SEO’ers. This will be tied up for years.
Yes! The internet is indeed the only place where corporations cannot control their brand images and it is emerging the most important place for the formulation of brand images. Yes! This does make them unhappy. That is separate from search, though.
In light of the situation google has secured a copyright on a new slogan, Don’t be evil, leave that to us!
Most great brands love it when they are talked about, the best ones don’t want to control free speech at all.
What the heart of this case is about, however, is nothing to do with free speech. It is all about a company who spends time, money, effort and goes to the trouble of protecting their brand, only to have another company ride on the back of that for advertising purposes.
I believe we should protect the trademark holder, and if that means Google and others need to change their business model. So be it.
But isn’t this what lots of advertisers do? Isn’t this what Apple does to Windows in all of their ads? Isn’t it just saying, you want a? how about b? Paid for by b. Why would you own the name of your company online but not anywhere else? Anyone can direct you elsewhere through creative advertising. It is essentially the nature of advertising when other name brands are mentioned in the ad. That’s not a problem in any other medium what should it be online?
Using trademarks as keywords for ads is certainly controversial, but this affects only a tiny part of search queries. Saying that misdirection would be Google’s business model, as you did in your earlier post, is so obviously wrong that you would be better off admitting a mistake rather than trying to prove your point by citing hardly relevant legal cases.
Well, I’m not prepared to accept your claim yet. I am running experiments now on search for products to determine how prevalent (or not) this is. But I’m looking for more definitive answers than either of us has at present. Right now it appears pretty clear from their public financials that if Google were not doing sponsored search they would not be nearly as profitable, and it appears from interviews with corporate execs that they would not be seen as abusive. As we both know, sponsored search is, indeed, a means of directly the customer away from the most likely sites unless they pay to prevent this. Jury is, quite literally, still out on this one.
“a means of directly the customer away from the most likely sites unless they pay to prevent this”
What a misstatement! You are forgetting the organic search results that will appear on the page, and the sponsored results are clearly marked. It’s giving the customer a choice. Whether the customer actually goes for it, depends on so many things. What would you say if the Yellow Pages had an ad of a competitor right next to the business you are looking for?
Sorry, you are wrong.
There is absolutely no transparency as to who and what appears in the organic search listings.
There are plenty of very large companies whose products and technologies who don’t even appear in country specific listings. Your argument is a fallacy and it appears you don’t fully understand SEO.
Google also frequently changes their algorythm which also impacts SEO efforts so there is no certainty and because they have 93% market share in my country we cannot do anything about it.
So, if I type in something I want in Google I am not getting the most relevant page from the company I am searching for and competitors are sponsoring key terms and phrases to intercept me. Google have setup a win-win for them but a lose for consumer and lose for company situtation. Company HAS to pay for paid search listings against competitors – driving up the prices – and company spends lots of money to optimise for organic search but again it’s pages aren’t ebing displayed so has to spend more money on paid search. Endless merrygoround only benefiting Google.
I think it is shady journalism more than anything to focus on the exception vs the rule. Sure brand keyword conquest may fall into a moral grey area. Perhaps it should even be illegal. You keep using small arguments to make a large point. This in no way throws Google’s business model into question… Guidelines may change… but come on Eric. Really….
How the hell does this have ANYTHING to do with your advertising-is-dying post?
Jeez man.
Well, if you remember the cage fight, Danny said he had never heard anyone complain about paid search ever. I thought (1) it would be interesting to note that people have complained and (2) see what the informed tech community thinks is an informed and helpful response. I guess “jeez man” is about as helpful as we are going to be.
Professor, so to defend your argument, you take one of the WEAKEST responses to your arguments, and prove, through a technicality(Danny’s use of the word “never”), that Danny is wrong. That in itself is pretty silly and immature of you.
Even bigger problem I have with you is how you think simply disproving Danny(even if via a technicality) makes your over-the-top lame argument that advertising-is-dying true. No it doesn’t. One lawsuit against a company that does billions in revenue does not prove JACK! Is that idea SO hard to grasp? I am in biz school right now. And if you were my professor, I’d expect something better from you than these sub-average arguments.
@Hmm
You sir, are a d*ckhead.
I hate to use that word just as much as I dislike people who cannot grasp the simple concept of decency when offering a counter-argument.
Eric Clemons didn’t deserve your vitriol.
Honestly, the rudeness that exudes out of people who hide under the mask of anonymity is shocking.
This is especially ironic because Rescuecom has been criticized for allegedly buying 1-800-GEEK SQA when the real number is 1-800-GEEKSQU.
http://www.yout...h?v=jHsnEh8ySLI
So a landlord who sells billboard space for your hamburger joint right next to a McDonalds is infringing?
What about Brand name monopolies whose products are the defacto standard and all competitors need to identify their products with the brand name… They have to use the trademark to trigger ads so they can enter the market, especially if they 100% an online biz?
I would liken this to a door with the company logo on it that leads to the competitor. That door is the first one the person sees as sponsored takes a couple slots right above organic and most people don’t realize it is an advertisement.
@Tom
So you in a new town and ask for directions to the McDonalds, just before u get there you see a Burger King with a sign saying “our 1/4 pounder is bigger than a Bigmac”. Consumer confusion? Is Burger King infringing, and then you pass by a Wendy’s… more confusion and infringement?
You tell if your grand parents/parents can tell the difference without looking at the a href destination?
Burger King
Burger King
Whenever I deal with clients, this problem comes up all the time. “Buy Me This Domain”, I searched for it in Google and couldn’t find it. Then I have to tell them it is registered, and they say how do you know? Sponsored vs Organic search results run the same line and most 30+ general public types have no clue what the difference is. This is where the these lawsuits stem from. Google does “poach traffic” and resells it to competitors. The trade off comes from new traffic Google introduces to these brands vs the portion that gets siphoned off to competitors. Most people don’t care, don’t know and enjoy there search engine traffic as it is new customers not coming from there traditional media outlets. Because they aren’t informed they don’t realize Google siphons off some for there own bank account. With that being said, as a society in general does Google actually provide enough a service to the public for us not to care about the cases where they hurt companies?
All kind of jobs info here you have just see the kind of job which you want to do like as Data Entry Typist and more and more which you want could search in Google Search Engine
Thank you
Google is Evil. Sell your stock now if you have any. Trust me it’s going to plummet by this summer
If they were truly evil, it would probably make sense to buy more stock while the markets are down, don’t you think?
The wheels of justice move slowly, and a skilled evil corporation can delay the inevitable reckoning nearly indefinitely, while building up market share and value. The stock would go way up, at least for a few years.
@Eric Clemons
That all may be, but only a very little part of Google´s revenue comes from bidding on trademark keywords. Most of Google´s revenue comes from surely not misdirecting searches and ads. It´s debatable who should be allowed to advertise on trademark keywords. (I personally think everyone.) But I repeat: It´s not such a big problem for Google´s revenue.
If I own a trademark, why should Google be allowed to make money on my trademark? That’s the simple problem here. If it shows up in organic search that’s fine. But I don’t want Google selling MY trademark to my competitors and making money off of it in the process. If I own the trademark ABC and I spend a lot of money to advertise and make people so aware of my company that they go to Google and type in ABC, then Google shouldn’t profit by reselling it to my lazy competitor. Simply wrong and I think Google should be ashamed of itself.
How anybody knows if some one is searching using a keyword brand ‘xyz’, that person will not be happy to see brand ‘pqm’ or all the ‘xyz sucks sites’ as a search results?
If they are unhappy to see ‘pqm’ or ‘xyz sucks’ they will stop using that search engine, and can move to another one. Google is hear to please nobody but the users who are not captive.
Is it fair to demand that searching for a brand will generate a blank page with the link to brand’s home page only?
Subhankar – There should be a full page of responses to search ABC, but they should be organic searches. The problem here is that Google is SELLING the search term ABC to ABC’s competitors and monetizing it. I see no problem if I search on ABC and get a page full of organic search results and any of ABC’s paid results. But if I search on ABC and get PAID results for DEF company (ABC’s competitor) then that is the problem.
Not to put too fine a point on semantics here but we have to specify what ‘abc’ and ‘def’ stand for. If ‘abc’ stands for a company name/brand and google is selling that keyword to a competitor, then you’re right, that’s a problem.
But if ‘abc’ stands for ‘best sushi in new york’, then it really becomes a matter of who can pay more for those keywords. And I see no problem with the keywords going to the highest bidder.
Keep in mind that the primary purpose of the trademark laws (from the legal point of view) are not to protect the intellectual property of the trademark owners, but the protect the consumer from confusion (the intellectual property protection is a side effect).
The confusion that may result is that you search for a product using its trademark, presumably because you want the specific trademarked product, but the search gives you another product.
This actually happened to me… I worked for a legal software product with the registered trademark of “Time Matters’ that had a fierce competition with a similar product named ProLaw. ProLaw was purchased by WestLaw, suddenly had huge resources and immediately out bid us for the Time Matters search term.
All of a sudden when people searched for Time Matters, the search result had a generic description (i.e., didn’t specify that it was another product and people don’t always notice URLs) and a click on the link took them to the ProLaw page causing confusion (e.g. people wondered if we had also been bought by West Law).
On the other hand, if you search for Time Matters today (LexisNexis bought Time Matters so the two big players stopped outbidding each other), you see many other excellent supporting products which are part of the Time Matters community. Therefore, I’m not so sure that a trademark holder should be able to stop this type of use of a trademarked search term.
The point being that this is a real, substantive, and interesting issue and some very good thinking should go into protecting from confusion, but not giving trademark holders a big stick to stomp out competition.
It actually is an interesting question, and I think that trademark holders need to be able to protect their trademark against infringement where it will confuse a consumer, but should not be able to restrict all use to the point where they can stifle competition.
And this really isn’t a Google issue, per say, as all of the major search engines do the same thing. Google just happens to have the deepest pockets, so people sue them first, and call them evil, and all of that.
All that said, despite the orangey-pink background, and the text that says “sponsored link,” I think that the ad that appears at the top of the search results might confuse consumers. It could appear like the top search result has been highlighted. (This is worse on Google than Yahoo! or MSN, since Google has fewer ads on top)
But, the ads off to the right should be fair game. They’re not mixed in with the search results, so there should be a lot less confusion for the consumer.
Eric you’re taking a beating from a few here but I’m really impressed at how frequent and thoughtful your responses to comments are – good job regardless of if you’re right or wrong.
On a side note out of about 10k a month in ad words for various companies I have done some consulting for, about 5-10% of there budget goes toward competitors keywords. Just food for thought on how much money actually is being made form this practice.
Google routinely removes trademarked sponsored ads when asked. I don’t know how frequently they deny removal requests or what criteria they use in deciding, but it is a trademark holder’s responsibility to protect their mark, and Google is in the wrong if they allow clear trademark violations to be bid on. It ought to depend on how generic a search term is. For example, a competitor should not be able to bid on the term “Rackspace,” a trademark, but “rack space,” the generic term, should be fair game. However, responsible measures need to be in place to ensure companies do not abuse the system; you shouldn’t be able to trademark “New York Doctors,” for instance, and expect to have sole visibility in sponsored results for that term.
The FTC promotes the use of trademarks in comparative advertising. http://www.ftc..../ad-compare.htm
It is preposterous to not allow one to advertise “compare to”, “compatible with”, “works with”, “smilar services to” when if fact the product you are advertising is just that.
This is a very good point. Please respond Eric.
Not really. Brand Y is welcome to use their trademark for search and their own web site to compare themselves to Brand X.
Google shouldn’t be taking Brand Y’s money to be in the search results for Brand X.
True… An infomercial for the Slanket should never have a a commercial run for the Snuggie.
Touche my friend….
Why not? What if the search is not for “Brand X” but for “Alternatives to Brand X” or “Something more affordable than Brand X”?
You would also ban the competitor’s ad for these searches, even though that’s exactly what the searcher is hoping to find.
The day of the one word search is over. The long tail searches that are becoming the norm will use any term – not just trademarks – in many ways. To make law as if the search was for just one word would be plain stupid.
I hope my sarcasm was not lost in the imagery of Eric Clemons in a Snuggie.
i hold a lot of google stock. this worries me a little bit. i don’t think it will have much affect and as i read, it won’t. i wonder what other google share holders will do with this news. any of you out there? i would be interested in your view.
This is not ultimately about Google, the trademark owners or upstart competitors.
Ultimately, it’s about letting consumers and citizens find information efficiently.
Seems to me, if I walked into a bar or a brick and mortar store, I could start up a conversation about “a good enough TV brand that’s cheaper than Sony” or “a luxury sedan that’s more mechanically reliable than Mercedes.” I can ask my friends if they know of any colas that “beat Coca Cola in a taste test.”
Why shouldn’t I be able to do the equivalent on the paid part of the web? Don’t consumers and citizens use trademarks all the time to get more efficiently to the information we are looking for? Why shouldn’t paid search help us in that goal?
Trademark owners benefit – and, at least as importantly, consumers benefit – when trademark law prevents knockoffs from misidentifying themselves. I can see how trademark owners benefit by exerting enhanced control over online speech triggered by (and not even using) their trademark, but it’s not immediately clear to me why consumers and citizens benefit.
To get this right, courts are going to have to address whether consumers and citizens are helped or harmed by ads that trigger off of a consumer’s use of a trademark but do not confuse the consumer (setting aside the goofy ‘initial confusion’ doctrine that should be deep sixed sooner instead of later).
This is not small stakes. The enormous, creeping expansion of intellectual property rights affects us all.
The problem is when trademarks are allowed to be used in outright lies or deceptive ads — ie: XYZ is a scam or ABC software is spyware. In fact this can border on libel. It’s perfectly fine to throw up a page and optimize it to show up organically, but for a trademark holder to have no control over results like this in sponsored ads is troubling. As has already been stated, many users don’t even understand the difference between organic and sponsored results, so a sponsored result triggered by typing a company’s name could be incredibly damaging to a less savvy user. I do think trademarks should be allowed with permission — as a reseller, distributor, affiliate, etc..
As an AdWords user, I’ve run into a blacklist of sorts when attempting to place an bid that used a company name, receiving a message that the term was forbidden. What’s unusual is that there seems to be so much variation in what people are experiencing when bidding on or reporting sponsored ads that contain trademarks (not to mention the shadiness when Google has scrubbed sponsored ads on particular trademarks in the city where a court case is ongoing).
With all due respect, I’m not following you.
To give trademark owners control over all use of their trademarks in sponsored ads to deal with fraud is an incredibly overbroad response. It’s like using Agent Orange to kill all the vegetation in the neighborhood instead of bending over to pick a weed. If fraud is an issue, use the many remedies addressed at fraud (including the trademark risk of confusion standard) instead of just limiting use of the trademark to those the trademark holder approves.
Again, this shouldn’t be just about the rights of the trademark holder. The ultimate issue is helping consumers and citizens get to accurate information in the most efficient way.
Google owns 65% of the search market, or more in some countries, and they own several online advertising networks?
When they start to regulate how other companies and other individuals utilize search and content, and their decisions have the effect of boosting their bottom line, anti-trust issues need to be investigated.
It is going to be very hard to figure all this out considering there are trillions of keywords. The govt can’t regulate on a case by case basis and neither can google. It would have to be an “all or nothing” approach.
If trademarks bidding is completely banned that wouldn’t be fair to consumers or competitors. I always see TV ads from GM talking about how much better their car is than a Honda. I know that it’s GM trying to stop me from buying a Honda and to hopefully buy a GM. It’s not misdirection, it’s “additional information” to my buying process. Let’s try this in the online world.
I type in “Honda Accord” and an ad from GM with the headline comes up saying “Better MPG than Accord?” Would that not be fair? I would love for that ad to come up while I’m searching for an Accord.
I think the only time when sites should not use a trademark is when they are outright pretending to be the trademark (i.e. similar urls as trademark and outright saying they are the trademark). I’m not sure this even happens nor have I ever seen it. It’s not like someone can say they are Nike Airs and than you purchase them and they send you Reeboks -such a company wouldn’t stay in business very long. Therefore in the end the “free market” system can regulate itself.
Generally, I’m privacy advocate and strong believer in freedom of speech. I also believe trademark holders have gone way too far in claiming protections, since I believe the spirit of trademark laws were to protect CONSUMERS, not companies.
That being said, I’ve been in charge of Google programs before for vendors and have seen first hand just how Google has exploited company trademarks for profit, and I think Google should NOT allow competitors to bid on your trademark.
Because, I believe Gopogle’s use of trademarks is directly in opposition to the spirit of the laws. If someone google’s Pepsi, OBVIOUSLY they are looking for the Pepsi Web site. They aren’t looking for “colas”. It is not in the consumer’s interest to be potentially misdirected to other sites when the person is looking for Pepsi.
The exception: If someone is looking for places to buy Pepsi, then Pepsi could allow official affiliates to bid on the brand keyword in a “store”. This would be separate from general listings. This type of service would not only benefit the companies, but consumers. How many times have you googled a brand, been given store links, only to find that store doesn’t sell that brand??! Uggs are a great example.
Anyways, I think Google deserved to lose this case and I will be happy if the final judgment falls away from them.
What makes you think that when people include a trademark in a search they are just looking for that one brand? You assert that as a fact, but I think it is highly unlikely to be true. I know that I routinely use trademarks as a shortcut to get to a class of products, even when I am actively looking for competitive options.
Beyond that, as time goes by, there will be even less truth in your assertion. In the relatively primitive world of 2009, I count as a relatively sophisticated user of search engines. As both the technology and user sophistication advance – and they will – people will get increasingly able to use trademarks to get at information somehow proximate to but not limited to the brand.
‘
To freeze the law based on how you assert people search in 2009 would foreclose those developments, thereby increasing the cost of finding information. That would be a bad thing for citizens and consumers.
The other point I wanted to make is the Google used to prevent competitive bidding. In 2004, if I called and said a competitor was using our brand as a search term (NOT IN THE AD), Google would block it for me. Now they won’t. That’s how they are making their money. Not the general keywords like before, but the bidding up of top brand names. I think its abhorrent.
Sarah said…
How many times have you googled a brand, been given store links, only to find that store doesn’t sell that brand ??!
What gives you the right to demand that a search engine must exist in the first place for you to search for anything that you want? What’s wrong with the phone book? See, this is the problem with anti-trust laws which is anti-property rights. Before Google came along, there was no such rights pre-existed. If you don’t like Google, then don’t use it. Google has no obligation to index everything on the net for you to search for. There are millions of things on the net that Google search doesn’t index at the moment, but does it mean that someone is searching for those non-existent topics on Google should file a complaint about Google not indexing them?
Think about it clearly. Can you answer that question? The law is wrong, pure and simple and it is not rocket science to see that the law is wrong. Google can selectively index the net if they want to. It is non of anyone’s business to demand them to index pages or contents that they wish not to. WHY? Because it is their inalienable rights to do so. The rights to property is not a rights granted by courts or by populism. It is an objective rights which is not something arbitrarily given/granted to someone. If you don’t understand this easy to understand concept of inalienable rights to one’s property, then perhaps you can go to the The Objective Standard site to do some serious readings regarding this right.
I don’t think anyone’s touched on the Quality Score as part of this. If competitors want to compete on others brand terms they can do so, but at a much higher cost. Brand holders can have the brand name in their text ad meaning they will often have much, much lower CPCs. This makes it often ineffective to try and compete as the ROI will not be worth it.
I think Eric misses the point – if consumers didn’t find what they wanted on Google then they wouldn’t use it. There’s a reason why it’s owning just about every market it’s in – it returns very relevant results. Although the sponsored listings aren’t perfect it’s still light years away from what used to be returned on earlier search engines.
Yes, brandholders can have their brand name in the ad text, so they’d have a lower CPC, but why should they be paying Google what amounts to protection money?
so
how are people still paying for pay per clicks. Click on my site above. Google Sponsored Links at a set fee and no pay per click charges. I been using them for 5 years and its under less than one hundred dollars a month.
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