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AXA sues Google over AdWords
Da Fokka writes "Insurance company AXA is suing Google in a french court because a search for 'AXA' results in links to their competitors. A similar claim was initially awarded but successfully appealed by Google. If this claim is successful, this could be quite a setback for Google's business model."
The last appeal (better described in an alternate story ) was overturned because all of the words involved were dictionary words, and that it was unrealistic to expect a trademark search for every AdWords sale.
However, there is no doubt that AXA isn't found in most dictionaries, certainly not English or French - so it would seem they actually have a good chance of loosing this lawsuit.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Even in sue happy America this case would be dismissed. It's like suing a library because I went to look for say McDonalds and found that Burger King also sells hamburgers. McDonalds is mad wanting to bundle library with a default configuration whereby McDonald's information is installed in the library and cannot be removed once installed nor can it be collocated with other Hamburger joints. Now that McDonalds has the market captured it can now be the dominate player in the hamburger field (reminiscent of a browser pun everyone). So now that McDonalds has the default configuration of libraries setup, McDonalds can now expand to, say, French Fires - you now must eat vegetable fried fries with fake beef flavoring. Did this court also award any damages from Amazons one click shopping scheme? This is crazy I'll stop now...
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/24/202821 6&mode=thread
:)
"If this claim is successful, this could be quite a setback for Microsoft's business model."
Nice consistent unbiased reporting there, guys.
when i go through the big phat yellow pages directory, looking for the "Blud E. Good Plumbing" phone number, i am subjected to other adverts of rival plumbing services. The Yellow pages are profiting from this, so why shouldn't google?
People who bought this book also bought....
If google loses in court they should refuse to index AXA _at all
Why wait until they lose? yank their cord now and give them a sense of reality.
Who says google has to list anybody?
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Let's take a step back for just a second. Std Disclaimer: IANAL, but I play one on /.
If "AXA" wins, this means that using its name is forbidden, unless the company gives its approval beforehand. This imposes an undue restriction on freedom of speech, since Google is certainly not the only forum in which AXA is discussed and/or searched. Will this company sue, let's say, every newspapers or forums that discuss insurance companies and/or policies? Unlikely.
A few years ago, AXA may have argue its case by saying that it was 'undue competition', since France had laws prohibiting comparative commercials (Product A is better than product B because of...). But this is not the case anymore and comparative commercials are now legal in France.
Google may also argue that AdWords do not 'target' AXA, since -- AFAIK -- they are generated automatically. AXA is an insurance company (this is public knowledge). Therefore, a Google search on, say 'life insurance' would return pretty much the same AdWords results.
Therefore, I think AXA does not have a case. I also believe they know it, but that some over-zealous jerk in its Legal Dept decided to press the case anyway, just to make a point. They are just throwing good money out the window.
This may seem surprising, but French courts have proven in the past to be remarkably reasonable when it came to the Internet (Yahoo! 'nazi' case aside) and the previous decision is a case in point, since AXA lost it.
I fully expect Google to fight this all the way to the French Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation), if need be. And I expect them to win.
Just my 0.02 Euros...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Absolutely not. Google is a profit-seeking company, and as a commercial entity Google's primary purpose is the advert, not the information. The information is the lure to get you to see the advert.
Cheers,
Ian
But this isn't about people searching for "insurance", with links to a variety of insurance companies' websites being returned.
This is about people searching for "AXA", a specific insurance company, with links to a variety of insurance companies' websites being returned.
"just because you've coined some obscure acronym for yourself or your business, does that mean it's Google's responsibility to insure that people find you during their search?"
Isn't the point of a search engine to accurately return the information that people are searching for? If a user searches for "AXA" using Google, and instead has a bunch of other insurance companies returned, at best I'd say Google's search engine needs a little work.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
The Scientology nuts are complaining that a search for "scientology" also results in anti-scientology sites. Should they be awarded damages too?
I don't think so.
True. However, if somebody paid Google to put an anti-Scientology site higher up on the list, this is no longer a matter of neutral search results, but a wilful use of a trademarked name. This isn't about searching, but about commercial profit out of someone else's trademark.
A better analogy is that you opened the phone book's white pages to look up McDonald's, and saw a Burger King ad right next to the McDonald's listing.
I've RTFA but frankly, there's not much information in there. Still, I guess that the reason why Axa sued is that the ad links mentioned the brand name "AXA". So maybe the proper analogy would be that you opened the white pages to look for McDonald's and see an ad for "McDonald's something" with the address and phone# of a BK.
Still not sure that this would justify a lawsuit but at least it's not that clear-cut.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
I don't see any problem. The Google search engine is doing exactly as it should - it is finding matching/close references within its website database. It just makes sense that the engine will find competitors/similar sites. A lawsuit over a service that is performing as it should should be dismissed immediately (with a warning to the industry not to try this stunt again).
Open up the yellow page phone book you have next to your phone. Look up any topic like "lawyers" and you'll find not one lawyer but a whole gaggle. Now AXA would have you believe this is wrong. When you open up the phone book looking around for something and you stumble across AXA it should be the only available financial institution? Is this what AXA really believes?
Why are companies afraid of competition? Because it makes them work a little bit harder? Shesh. Instead of suing Google who about count this as a blessing (aka free advertising) and get your marketing people to figure out away to capture the attention of people who when given a choice would want to choose AXA?
I'm fed up with companies trying to assert things that vaguely might belong to them. IMO you don't have rights to people not using your name. I've seen plenty of comparison adverts in the UK for cars, and that's perfectly legal.
What's their big problem anyway? I search for Axa because I want Axa and get some results for someone else? Well, maybe the "someone else" does it better and I might discover that? That, is what we in the free world call competition. If not, I'll find the site PDQ.
It is scummy. Why should you be able to advertise under someone else's name?
When people search for your competitors products, they don't want to see your ads.
Perhaps you should 1) work on improving your own image, so people would actually search for you, or 2) shut the hell up.
Few things are worse than a company that acts immorally then excuses it as "that's business"
Being that these results are generated by Google, it's Google's responsibility to make sure that none of their sponsors are abusing other companies' trademarks.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
What incentive does Google have to produce "accurate" results? Merely financial. The fact that google produces what's considered to be dependable search results given some search terms seems totally irrelevant. Google is beholden only to its investors (and it's still privately held, so the list probably isn't enormous). Google's ranking algorithm(s) are susceptible to abuse, and perhaps a competitor of AXA has done just so. But I wouldn't care if Google intentionally produced AXA's competitors as results for searches on "AXA". What right has anyone to demand that Google produce more accurate results (presumes that searching for "AXA" means that AXA's website is the desired result)?
Actually, this isn't (yet) true. As a private company, Google has no obligation whatsoever to be a souless capital seeking machine, and is perfectly free to decide that it's primarly an information service, with the advertising and cash flow being a useful side effect. And, judging from both Googles origins and it's actions I suspect thats more or less how the company views itself.
Too bad for your congresscritters that the `french' in french fries mainly refers to the way they are cut, not to their inventors. It was brought to English-speaking countries from France and of course dubbed `fries cut in the french fashion', but in France they are simply referred to as potatoe fries. Who actually invented them is up to debate - we Belgians like to take the credit, but on the other hand, we were part of France when fries first appeared...
:)
In any case, if you want good fries today, come to Belgium. You don't know what you've been missing.
Jw