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French Court Orders Google to Stop Competing Ad Displays
charleste writes "NPR is reporting that a French court has ordered Google to stop displaying ads when users search for competitors (e.g. if you search for Louis Vuitton, no more ads for Dior). If this holds up, wouldn't this affect most business models for free web tools?" CNET also has details , and information about previous cases.
Google Ruled a Trademark Infringer
"The court ordered Google to stop displaying ads for competitors of Louis Vuitton" Don't worry, Google can still advertise competitors of other products.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
As far as that company is operating in France, the French courts do have jurisdiction.
Google doesn't have to stop returning search results of competitor's pages that mention the brand requested by the searches. They just have to stop returning ads purchased by those competitors when the brand is requested. This isn't so surprising: we'd be scandalized if you could just pay Google to return your website among the search results for your competitor. So the paid placement is separated into ads. But we'd also be suspicious if we asked a vendor of both Coke and Pepsi for a "Coke", and they offered us Pepsi instead, or even brought it up as an alternative in the transaction - even though they're entirely free to promote whichever product they stock. The entire issue is whether Google is diluting the association of the brand's unique mark by delivering its competitors with the same association. I'm not sure that just prohibiting mention in even clear ads is the answer. Maybe just returning an ad for the requested brand, prioritized among associated competitors who've purchased placement in clearly marked advertising separate from "non-ad" results. But as consumers, this ruling protects us from "you ask for this, and they give you that" bait & switch.
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make install -not war
Yet somehow the french are smart enough to know that Milla Jovavich is slavic, not french.
I realize that this is Slashdot and you are therefore entitled to mindless knee-jerk reactions, but this only applies to TRADEMARKED keywords and PAID RESULTS. Therefore SCO can't buy adwords so that their ads show up when you search for IBM.
No, it's not about "competitors", it's about "trademarks". So it's very simple, the French court basically says ads (not searches) can't be targetted at trademarks of another company. So other luggage makers (and especially, those cloning Vuitton) can't pay for their ads to come up on a search for Vuitton. (Though they might turn up in the search results.)
Oui. Ce serait une idée très bonne.
Formerly GNU/Anonymous Coward. This message has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
So now, someone is *PAYING* the sales person in that store to show customers products by Dior everytime they ask to see your products. If you were Louis Vuitton you would not be happy about that.
This is no different than the practice of spiffs or push money to motivate the sales force to sell a particular product. I agree that it is not pleasant for the maker (and may be unethical toward the consumer), but paying the retailer for favored position, promotion, etc. is widespread.
If I search for 'Louis Vuitton' then I only want to see search results for Louis Vuitton.
Then you and I are different in our search habits. I sometimes use a brand name that I know as a convenient term to find hits in a category (especially to find reviews of products in the category or retailers in the category). Category terms are sometimes harder to create and more ambiguous then brand names. Perhaps Google needs a search modifier or preference to distinguish between "strict" (your style) and "loose" (my style) of searches.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Some might remember the Yahoo/Nazi paraphernalia case of a few years ago. Before that action was brought against Yahoo.com in France, their French subsidiary (Yahoo.fr) had removed all Nazi items from their auction site. The subsequent case (in which the American Yahoo's auction site was exhibiting nazi paraphernalia, a violation of French penal law) dealt primarily with jurisdiction. Yahoo.com continued to sell the items despite the French order (nice to know they had no qualms profiting off these items). The company went to the District Court in California to basically attempt to invalidate the French order and argue that there was no jurisdiction, and the court granted summary judgment for Yahoo.
The Court of Appeals recently reversed this decision, however, in November 2004. For those interested, this recent decision is here, and Professor Joel Reidenberg at Fordham Law School (he's up there with Lessig in Cyberlaw issues) has written extensively on the case and its effect on jurisdiction over internet activities in two articles (here and here).
Google bans all ads that criticize someone or something. It's company policiy that they only show ads for something never aginst.t ml
https://adwords.google.com/select/contentpolicy.h
"text advocating against any organization or person (public, private, or protected) is not permitted. "
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
Actually this is exactly the same as a practice that has existed in the paper yellow pages for almost it's entire existance. The small entries are in alphabetical order, but the display adds can be placed anywhere. If you wany your add next to that of your biggest competitor, you just have to pay for the privilege.
Google is not redirecting the link to the webpage - the equivalent to having a sales person redirect the customer. They're allowing the competitor to have an ad appear in a separate section when a keyword - in this case a prime competitors name, is entered. In most of the world this is common practice in all forms of advertising.
France has a law that forbids comparison in ads and is extending it to include Web Searches. I don't think it's right, but since it's the law, unless Google can find a loophole, they'll have to comply in France. They'll also have to comply in other places where similar laws exist.
...carrier dead.....
From what I see happening on my web-browser, no matter when I try and access google.com, I immediately get relocated to google.co.uk (Thank you Google, if I wanted google.co.uk I would type google.co.uk, and not google.com).
Presumably, anyone in France typing in google.com, will get google.fr, thus allowing Google to implement regional policies.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I just checked. If you search google.fr for "Louis Vuitton" no ads are shown, while both google.com and google.co.uk display some ads.
So it seems google is complying with the court order using google.fr. It could be the case that nobody bought "Louis Vuitton" ads at google.fr, but that seems particularly unlikely as Louis Vuitton itself is a French company.