You're free to advertise through other means. Search isn't the only way to be seen. Sadly you'd be better off firing your highly paid SEO staff and paying Google directly for better search results. Sorry SEO is dead occupation, I guess?
This has become the canonical group-think response on Slashdot any time a tech company is accused of doing anything wrong. "Vote with your feet and quit complaining."
But there is another way to look at this. Google offers free search. They have achieved monopoly status in the search market by providing free search for many years. On the other side of this process, if you want to be in business, you have to show up on google. When Google stacks a large number of paid ads in front of your company search resul
Keep in mind that the proposal must include a way for Google to make money from web search. Google spends billions on hardware, bandwidth and engineering to make web search what it is -- and what it is is a search engine that is so good that people can and do reasonably expect that the top hit for whatever they type in will be the thing they wanted. This is an incredibly-valuable service for the world, one that deserves compensation, and one that must be compensated if you wish it to continue existing and to continue being excellent.
Since its inception, the model for funding Google web search (once it found one; it was just funded by Stanford for a while, but that was never expected to be a workable long-term strategy) has been advertising, with simple, unobtrusive, text-only ads that are clearly labeled to distinguish them from organic search results. It is your contention that this has always been bad? If not, what changed, and what does that indicate about what should/could be done?
In Oz, there's a legal precedent that says Google Searching using someone else's brand name is NOT passing off.
That precedent is simply ludicrous. Its a classic case of 'winning in the courts via better (aka more expensive) lawyers'.
The ruling needs to be overturned at a legislative level. If you advertise using someone else's IP (eg recognised brand), you are stealing.
We don't need anything more fancy than that. As soon as it's been legislated, the problems will be sorted out in the civil courts.
So, you're saying that Google should be legally barred from returning any results other than the trademark owner's if a trademarked term is searched for? Or just barred from showing any ads if a trademarked term is searched for? Either way, that's a really, really broad prohibition, and one very open to abuse. If that were the case, clearly I should attempt to obtain trademarks on all search terms that people might use to find my competitors, creating product lines, etc., as necessary to justify the trad
I don't think you understand how trademark law works.
You cannot simply trademark anything and everything then beat people about the head and shoulders with it. Trademark != patent.
Ads that are visually distinct from search results would be a good place to start. A lot of people don't notice the little green "Ad" box next to the URL because they don't even look at that line. I think making the ad look more like an ad and less like a search result would be helpful. I don't think they'll do it, though, because I think they're counting on people misinterpreting what is and isn't an ad since that artificially inflates click-throughs on their ads.
Perhaps. You're basically arguing for some sort of a legal line for how "distinct" is distinct enough. ISTR that this has already been litigated, perhaps more than once.
Personally, I find the "Ad" box next to the URL to be perfectly adequate and from the comments on this article so do many others. See the posts that comment on how their eyes automatically skip past the ads (which I often do, too, depending on what I'm searching for).
The amount of beauty required launch 1 ship = 1 Millihelen
Forced? (Score:1)
You're free to advertise through other means. Search isn't the only way to be seen.
Sadly you'd be better off firing your highly paid SEO staff and paying Google directly for better search results.
Sorry SEO is dead occupation, I guess?
Re: (Score:5, Interesting)
This has become the canonical group-think response on Slashdot any time a tech company is accused of doing anything wrong. "Vote with your feet and quit complaining."
But there is another way to look at this. Google offers free search. They have achieved monopoly status in the search market by providing free search for many years. On the other side of this process, if you want to be in business, you have to show up on google. When Google stacks a large number of paid ads in front of your company search resul
Re:Forced? (Score:4, Interesting)
What is your proposed solution?
Keep in mind that the proposal must include a way for Google to make money from web search. Google spends billions on hardware, bandwidth and engineering to make web search what it is -- and what it is is a search engine that is so good that people can and do reasonably expect that the top hit for whatever they type in will be the thing they wanted. This is an incredibly-valuable service for the world, one that deserves compensation, and one that must be compensated if you wish it to continue existing and to continue being excellent.
Since its inception, the model for funding Google web search (once it found one; it was just funded by Stanford for a while, but that was never expected to be a workable long-term strategy) has been advertising, with simple, unobtrusive, text-only ads that are clearly labeled to distinguish them from organic search results. It is your contention that this has always been bad? If not, what changed, and what does that indicate about what should/could be done?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Forced? (Score:4)
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps. You're basically arguing for some sort of a legal line for how "distinct" is distinct enough. ISTR that this has already been litigated, perhaps more than once.
Personally, I find the "Ad" box next to the URL to be perfectly adequate and from the comments on this article so do many others. See the posts that comment on how their eyes automatically skip past the ads (which I often do, too, depending on what I'm searching for).