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Our great-grandchildren are going to look back on history and struggle to understand why we used a search engines that intentionally accept bribes to poison the
by oliwarner 6y ago
Our great-grandchildren are going to look back on history and struggle to understand why we used a search engines that intentionally accept bribes to poison their SERPs.
I hope we can get this right one day. Allowing trademark squatting helps nobody but scammers (and search engines).
- Grimm1 6y agoHear hear.
- chrischen 6y agoAs a relatively small business with no clout we've had to deal with fly-by-night operations violating our trademark with Google ads (basically randoms running ads that look like they are from US when people search our web domain) and Google not doing anything because we didn't register the trademark. Of course Google won't do anything—it'd hurt their bottom line!
- marcinzm 6y agoAs I understand it, if you didn't register the trademark then it's not your trademark legally except as a defense against lawsuits. So Google seems to have followed the law. Better than them becoming some sort of extra-legal arbitrator of quasi-trademarks.
- oliwarner 6y agoThis is exactly the mentality I was talking about in my first comment. You think it's better than Google only follows the letter of the law, and destroy it's search credibility, than put some process in place to prevent deceptive advertising. Searching for one thing, seeing something different at the top of the page feels pretty deceptive to me. If it didn't work, they probably wouldn't do it.
- mehrdadn 6y agoIt seems difficult to do this in general when so many search terms can have multiple meanings. Are you suggesting there should be human review for every ad? (Which is not saying it's necessarily a bad idea; just trying to understand how you imagine it'd work.)
- VWWHFSfQ 6y agoI think a lot of people here will say that there should be a decentralized "global" index that any search provider frontend can source their results from. I'm not sure exactly how that would work. But the goal is to separate advertising from the search index itself.
- mehrdadn 6y agoI'm confused, what is the relevance of that to this problem? Wherever the results are coming from, ads will have to appear before them pretty much by definition, right?
- VWWHFSfQ 6y agoIf the owner of the search index is also the advertising broker then you end up in situations like this. If the search results themselves are effectively commoditized, then the advertising layer becomes less of an issue.
- mehrdadn 6y agoHm so what would happen if Facebook tries to buy Messenger ads for "Signal" in that scenario? Sorry I'm still not following.
- marcinzm 6y agoYahoo Search used to have a list of brand keywords that advertising was restricted on. Not perfect but covers the vast majority of cases especially if you allow additions over time. Apparently since then the courts have ruled that it's not a legal issue so it's not done anymore.
- harryf 6y agoYou may be assuming too much of our great-grandchildren. Based on what we can see of mobile phones today, they will be having their attention spans minutely controlled at all times, and may not be thinking anything.
- ErikAugust 6y agoYou are assuming that people will have great-grandchildren.
- threeseed 6y agoFacebook is not bribing anyone. Facebook is not trademark squatting. Words matter. Inflammatory nonsense has no place on HN.
- jedberg 6y ago> Facebook is not trademark squatting. Signal is a registered Trademark. They are buying ads for the word Signal. How is that not Trademark squatting? > Facebook is not bribing anyone. I think OPs point is that it should be considered bribery to pay Google to show up at the top of the search results. I think they chose their words very intentionally.
- threeseed 6y agoTrademark squatting and bribery have specific, legal definitions and in many countries are illegal. It does not mean bidding on your competitor's keywords or paying to use Google's advertising platform. You do understand that what you are saying is libellous right ?
- blackboxlogic 6y agoI read it in the context of "some day". They may be expressing optimism that the legal definitions could be corrected to match what they (and I) consider to be the commonly used meanings of these words.
- nearbuy 6y ago> Trademark squatting is when one party intentionally files a trademark application for a second party's registered trademark in a country where the second party does not currently hold a trademark registration. https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/newsletter/inventors-eye/dont-sit-and-wait-stopping-trademark-squatters https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/newsletter/inve...
- oliwarner 6y agoThey're paying money to a trusted authority for preferential treatment on a literal registered trademark, in such a way to try and poach customers. It's legal, but I don't understand why. The broader discussion point is why we do this to ourselves.
- cambalache 6y agoThey wont struggle, they will easily understand the phenomena and even group it under the same umbrella of the rubber barons,Spanish conquistadors and the opium merchants . A group of thugs exploiting a market by mercilessly taking advantage of undefined, inadequate and slow regulation on which it is basically a new situation, all this helped by buying the politicians.
- Schiendelman 6y agoBands of rubber barons!
- Karunamon 6y agoAds are clearly marked as ads and are separate from the actual search results.
- A_non_e-moose 6y ago> Ads are clearly marked as ads and are separate from the actual search results. Except for the time they weren't... https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/squint-and-youll-click-it/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/squint-and-youll-click-it/
- mkl 6y agoMany non-technical or older people can't easily tell the difference. I've seen it in action with colleagues and relatives (smart well-educated experts in their fields).
- AshWolfy 6y agoor just people not paying attention