There was a time when Google disallowed this. Google even asked us (Firefox team) to report ads squatting on our trademarks. Eventually they stopped caring and now it's in their ad sales pitchdeck just how effective trademark squatting can be.

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5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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Marsymars 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I feel like there’s at least some country in the world where the legal regime would be amenable to ruling against Google if they were taken to court over trademark squatting by the trademark holders.

	▲	WhyNotHugo 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In Argentina it is illegal (since the nineties) to mention other brands. So a Coca Cola ad cannot reference Pepsi. Laundry detergents can not make references to other brands, so they say “better than other generic brands” without names or hinting any in particular. I suppose the exact wording is important here, but this practice sound dangerously close to violating this restriction.

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thrtythreeforty 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can you in principle sue people buying these ads for trademark infringement? (I realize in practice the answer is that it's not worth the game of whack-a-mole.)

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remus 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Where is the trademark infringement? It's like honda buying an advert outside a VW dealership.

	▲	_superlevure_ an hour ago \| parent [-]
		No, it's like searching for the location of a VW dealership on your phone and Google Maps taking you to an Honda one instead.

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Palmik 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is not allowed and the advertisers are on borrowed time: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6118?hl=en

You can bid on competitor's keywords, but not use their trademarked name in the copy, especially not in a deliberately confusing way.

But I don't think Google moderates this very proactively.