22 Apr 08 Google Allow Competitive Brand Bidding

Sorry for the old story, but WTF, I can’t believe this one at all, Google are now going to allow other people to bid on my trademark protected brand.

icture the scene in boardrooms up and down the country where the owners of some of the most respected businesses have spent years of hard work and millions of pounds to build up a world class brand they have investing in quality throughout their operations to boost conversion rates, and develop a prestigious brand that has core values, and ensures a high conversion rate from potential customers.

Then Google shift the goal posts, and after years of recognising the value of brands and protecting them, they stop all this, and allow anyone including lazy affiliate marketers to perform the lowest value campaign possible and piggy back on a brand, while forcing the original brand owner to pay more for every click through to their website.

While Google claim that this change will not affect businesses to a great extent - after all, if I want Nike, I’ll buy Nike, even if there is an Adidas advert appearing in Google - it will.

Take British Airways as an example, they have spent years developing their brand, and people searching for it will more than likely be looking to book a flight.  This means that all the travel companies in the world can bid on the term BA, which is a trademark, and get a customer that is statistically likely to convert. All the investment in the brand that encourages a customer to choose a product from that brand is subverted by the affiliates and agents who simply pay 3p or whatever to get a customer.

Now to a certain extent, I can understand where Google is coming from, after all, this is the age of the Internet, the age where everyone is a publisher and there are a million shops with a market of one, and to these small businesses, brand is not important.  The temporary nature of the web means that there is no need for some companies to build long term relationships with their clients, and no value to them in having a brand.

Google could so easily have been one of these companies, and to a certain extent they are, I use them for email and to search for things, they are also the basis of my career, but if Live Search started offering better results, or HotMail was opened up so I could integrate it into more things, then I would switch.  I have no loyalty to Google, like they have no loyalty to the advertisers like BA who spend literally millions with them each year.  Its a sad state of affairs, but for me, the thing that takes the p!ss most about this somewhat casual attitude to the value of other brands is that Google have recently been super protective of their own brand - claiming that no-one should use the Brand name Google as a verb, as in to Google for something.

There is always a danger in double standards.