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Google Responds to AdWords Accusations

Posted by Zonk on from the sorry-should-have-thought-of-that dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google has issued a statement on the Inside AdWords Blog. Based on the thoroughness of the statement and the use of the word 'precedent' in the second sentence, it appears that the Google PR team huddled with the legal team to get their point across." From the post: "Being rather proud of AdWords as a means to effectively advertise one's products or services, it seems natural to use it ourselves. Since it's a common practice across the industry for companies to promote their own products and services through their own web presence, there is much precedent to do this. It's important to note, however, that our ads are created and managed under the exact same guidelines, principles, practices and algorithms as the ads of any other advertiser. Likewise, we use the very same tools and account interface."

2 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Weasel words by MDMurphy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's not ads, but I've always been impressed by what you get if you search Google and and are offered maps as options.

    Search Google for "map san francisco" at almost the top of the page you'll see links for :

              Map of San Francisco, CA
                        Google Maps - Yahoo! Maps - MapQuest

    You could argue about them being first, but they give you links to two other popular mapping sites right up top.

    Do the same search on Yahoo! Lower than the Yahoo map you'll find a link to MapQuest, but nowhere on the page is Google.

    So is that Google advertising Yahoo for free?

  2. Tax Liability? by Christopher_Edwardz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If google:

    • gives itself free advertising for other products in its portfolio
    • and derives monetary or other substantial benefit
    • and values this service for money

    Do they, then, have to mark as "income" the money they create in this manner? I mean, the point would be moot if they "paid themselves" and then marked that as income. (And also created a business expense I guess.)

    Do they have to bid, like the others, or do they simply bid[0] = bid.highest() + 1 where bid[0] is google's "bid"? If so, does this violate their own bidding rules? It appears by the article that they do bid fairly.

    However, if they do not use "real money" to do so, or record any "created money" as income (as it is value, as it is valuable, since they sell it as a service), isn't this a problem legally?