Google's newest policy concerning bidding on trademarked slogans for AdWords purposes has come under fire. French insurance company AXA has filed suit against the search engine for allowing others to bid on keywords that AXA has trademarked.
As reported in WebProNews earlier, Google revised their policy concerning trademarked slogans, allowing potential customers to bid on keywords, regardless if they were trademarked or not. This policy is limited to companies located in Canada and the US.
Google's policy concerning keywords that are trademarked says, "Please note that we will not disable keywords associated with trademark usage. In addition, please note that any such investigation will only affect ads served on or by Google." This statement is taken from Google's Trademark Complaint Procedure page.
This policy is not permitted outside of the US and Canada. "When we receive a complaint from a trademark owner, our review is limited to ensuring that the advertisements at issue are not using the trademarked term in the ad text or as a keyword trigger. If they are, we will require the advertiser to remove the trademarked term from the ad text or keyword list and will prevent the advertiser from using the trademarked term in the future."
AXA's case centers on the use of trademarked AdWords. According to TheRegister.com, "AXA claims that Google users searching for 'AXA' or 'direct assurance' were shown ads from rival insurers alongside search results." The AdWords in question are "AXA" and "direct assurance".
An initial hearing is scheduled in Paris for May 10, 2004.
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It seems that Google is getting closer to filing their IPO. The IPO is expected to value Google at around $20-25 billion dollars. Plans for the search engine's public offering have been kept quiet to the point of being secret. Although today, April 26, 2004, comes news of Google making a deal with two investment banks to underwrite the offering.
According to CNN Money, the banks in question are Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston. The two banks would share the estimated $100 million in banking fees for Google's IPO.
Google's filing date came back to the forefront when the it was discovered that the search engine would have to open its financial books to the SEC by the end of April 2004. The reason for Google having to divulge its financial records comes from an SEC rule that states that any company with over 500 shareholders and $10 million in assets is required to open their books. Google exceeds both of these limits.
Google appears hesitant to file publicly because co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who still maintain 30% ownership, do not want to relinquish control of the company.
Today Yahoo debuted the beta version of their newest instant messenger, version 5.6. Yahoo's newest version includes all types of bells and whistles, including new avatars and a stealth mode to hide you from certain users.
While the cosmetic additions to Yahoo Messenger make it more user friendly, the biggest inclusion to search engine users is the addition of a search box at the bottom of the utility. This gives users the ability to search Yahoo's engine without using a browser.
With more and more search engines moving towards non-browser searches, Yahoo becomes the first to include a search box on an instant messenger. Can AOL, Google, et al be far behind?
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