Google is changing AdWords trademark policy

Since may Google allows trademark bidding in the UK and Ireland, as they have been doing in US for four years To set things straight, the bidding only refers to the sponsored links in a search, the yellow coloured ones at the top side, not the natural search itself.


What this means is that before this date, only the owner of the trademark could buy the keywords associated with its brand, which was fairly cheap. The user searching for 'google' term, for example will have in the top and right hand side sponsored links by 'Google' themselves.

From 5th of may, anyone can pay to be listed in search ads in Google's UK results. Therefore, searching for 'Google' can return AdWords sponsored links such as 'Yahoo!' or 'MSN' if these companies choose to buy the keywords.

The result is much debated in UK, as companies will die to get their hands of most searched trademarks. Of course, this is a big chance for direct competitors to bid against eachother, or smaller firms to win page visitors is manage to buy relevant trademarks. Tesco has already announced that it is not going to bid against competitors and is encouraging others to do the same. Many companies in UK are not satisfied with this change of policy.

Why does Google do this? Will it not raise a question of credibility? Maybe AdWords is not doing so great and they are trying to improve their revenues, but on the long term this change might damage their reputation. Or not. Maybe people will not care or not even observe the difference, but one has to admit that this is a big change and probably all the big brands are currently re-calculating their budgets for marketing activities. The sums will rocket high.

The problem is Google is a medium and part of the distribution channel now. Many brands have used it cleverly to increase revenue. And now? Companies have to deal with this announcement the best they can, as there is nothing they can do. Why? Because they all tried so hard to exist on Google world and gave it so much power that organisations simply cannot get out of it any more.


In conclusion, I belive this is a bad image move for Google as the most valuable posesion of a search engine is crediblity and effectiveness. No matter how strong the brand is, if users perceive it to lack these, switching will be inevitable.

For companies .... well is't the same situation with the rising power of retailers .... the big four, as they are called in UK: Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury. If you are not on their shelves, you don't exist, which is what people say about Google. Monopoly. And I am not talking about the game.