What's with everyone chipping in knowledge of things they have no clue about? In your scenario, Google would just put the Lyft ad below the Uber ad in the search results, not make it invisible.
What stops Uber from making a third party company that outbids Lyft for the 2nd ad? Presumably it's just not worth it, people click the first ad or skip to the results?
No it is not something Google allows. But for big brands they manually disallow paid results (see "Nike"). I don't see any ads on the uber results page.
It seems more likely that:
- Other services have decided not to bid on "Uber". It may be more useful to bid on general keywords like "taxi" or "black car", etc.
- The price for that keyword is too high to be worth it
- The performance of the ads is poor such that Google doesn't show them.
- It's also possible that Lyft is bidding on the keyword "Uber", but only in certain geographical areas where they're trying to grow their presence.