Comment by axod | Hacker News Reader

Comment by axod | Hacker News Reader

This worries me. If someone searches for "ipod", why shouldn't the zune be allowed to advertise on the results page?

It should be completely up to Google how they want to monetize that results page, and which adverts they want to display there. Not up to a judge working from antiquated trademark law.

What's more, it's useful for the user. It's nice to see related things that might be of interest.

Here's the analogy:

  * Man goes into shop
  * Man asks sales assistant "Where are the iPods?"
  * Sales assistant responds "Aisle 9"
  * Man walks to aisle 9, and sees not only iPods, but various other mp3 players.

Note that the opinion considers this exact analogy, on page 13. The question in this case is whether Google's product placements on search result pages cause "consumer confusion." The distinction between this case and the shop is that, with product placement, according to the court, everyone knows what's going on, so there is no "consumer confusion." In contrast, does everyone know that a Google ad resulting from a search may be unrelated to the search? Maybe we HN readers do, but the question is whether the "average consumer" would.

Nevertheless, the court did not go nearly so far as the above commenter suggested. All it said was that Google's product placements were potentially more confusing than the prior 1-800 case. The product placements might not be confusing nonetheless.

It's a good analogy, but most places I walk into the iPods have a separate kiosk set up. So I don't think the result will really be all that different from how retail stores work.

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