[Marsymars]

> It ought to be illegal to host ads for registered trademarks (+/- some edit distance).

This makes me a bit uncomfortable because of how close it comes to infringing on freedom of speech, and how specific a rule it would for search engines (and chat bots) - i.e. there's no real analogy of "can't target trademarked terms" for any ad format other than search engines.

I think my preference would be to simply enforce laws around fraud. If you're a business and you intentionally mislead people, that's fraud, pure and simple. Bring the enforcement hammer down so that companies don't dare make an ad that granny might mistake for not being an ad. Make them err far on the side of making ads look unmistakably like ads for fear of ruinous fines.

[coldtea]

>This makes me a bit uncomfortable because of how close it comes to infringing on freedom of speech,

That's fine, ads should be downright forbidden and get no "freedom of speech".

[Nevermark]

It wouldn't impinge on freedom of speech. Nothing would be prohibited from being said.

It would require conflicts of interest to be disclosed clearly. I.e. labelling speech incentivized by someone else (ad buyer) clearly, as not organic speech (the search engine results).

That is pro-transparency and ethics, not anti-speech.

[Marsymars]

> It would require conflicts of interest to be disclosed clearly. I.e. labelling speech incentivized by someone else (ad buyer) clearly, as not organic speech (the search engine results).

That's specifically what I'm proposing in the post you replied to?

[Nevermark]

Ha! You are correct, that you were correct.

Thanks. I misread a sentence, missed your nuance, and then off to the races.

[echelon]

You're not allowed to use Pikachu commercially. Why should Google? They're taking advantage of every trademark to make money.

Googling a trademark should activate a "no bids" mode.

If Google wants to defend this action, then they should explain why they turned the URL bar into a search product and bought up 90% of the real estate. They've been incredibly heavy handed in search, web, and ads.

[Marsymars]

> You're not allowed to use Pikachu commercially.

There are many uses of "Pikachu" that are reserved for the trademark holder, but by-and-large the point of trademark is to avoid consumer confusion by preventing people from passing off goods/services that aren't from the "Pikachu" holder as actually being from the "Pikachu" trademark holder.

Generally, I am allowed to use "Pikachu" if it's in reference to Pikachu and doesn't involve passing off non-Pikachu things as actually being Pikachu things. If I'm a former employed-by-Nintendo Pikachu illustrator, I'm allowed to advertise that. (Even if I can't provide samples of my work.) I can advertise that I'm the "#1 seller of Pikachu snuggies" as long as I am the #1 seller of non-counterfeit Pikachu snuggies. I can charge people a subscription fee for full access to a website where I review Pikachu (and other pokemon). If I work at Walmart and someone asks me where they can get a Pikachu plush, I'm allowed to direct them to the Digimon plush section, for which I receive a kickback on sales.

The consumer confusion happening when someone googles a trademark and gets ads for different things isn't due to trademark infringement, it's due to misleading ads, which shouldn't be allowed regardless of whether a search term is trademarked or not.

[spolitry]

During a sale aren’t allowed to lie about digimon being pikachu, even if it’s hard to enforce.

[Marsymars]

Yes, of course, you can't lie as a business, but if someone walks into Walmart and searches for "Pikachu?", Walmart employees are free to be trained to use the trademarked term and reply "You don't want Pikachu, consider Digimon!"

(It's a contrived hypothetical, but the closest I could get to a meat-space version of search keywords.)

[eastbound]

Let’s remember it’s not new: Back in 2005, gannies (and 20yo non-nerds too) would install all sorts of viruses by clicking on popups thinking it’s the real thing. I personally switched to Firefox then Mac which didn’t have this problem. It’s like browsing a torrent website without an adblocker: There is absolutely no way to hit the right button, it’s URL changes between mousedown and mouseup.

[Loudergood]

Putting adblock in my moms browser was basically the end of weekly support calls.