[jessaustin]

In case you work in the relevant part of ads, could you say why advertisers are allowed to buy their competitors' literal trademarked business names on Adwords? This seems like a protection racket: "nice business you got here; it'd be a shame if that knockoff down the street paid me enough to bury it..."

[grapehut]

Absolutely agree. The company I worked from had a persistent problem with someone stealing customer details by buying AdWords targeting our brandname with a fake phishing site. We would report it, 2-3 days later Google would take it down. Then the next day, they'd be back with a different phishing site. At what point is Google just complicit?

[jessaustin]

Wow I didn't even think of that one.

I saw it when a business for which I did some work would have customers calling from their competitor's lobby saying, "This stupid receptionist doesn't know about my appointment, what do you mean I'm in the wrong place, I put your name in the phone google?! Screw you I'm going to just get the work done here!" Google/Maps/Android had customers driving past the business for which they had searched by literal business name to some other business that was spending more on Adwords for that literal business name.

[jessaustin]

By the complete lack of response from the Google representative above, one may infer that he works in exactly this relevant part of ads, and has nothing to say in his defense.