HP JOINS CRITICS OF DELL’s …….

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HP joins critics of Dell sell
DELL has again been accused of registering its competitors’ brands on Google AdWords.
Hewlett-Packard, BlackBerry and Palm are the latest to say their trademarks have been snapped up.HP has accused Dell of appropriating its company name and the iPAQ brand in an effort to drive sales of its competing line of Axim handhelds.Dell raised the hackles of Acer and Toshiba last week when searches on the terms “Acer notebook” and “Toshiba notebook” in Google’s advertising program directed click-throughs to the Dell website.

Acer has threatened to sue over the conduct.
Denying the allegations, a Dell spokeswoman said it had bought only the generic terms “notebook” and “laptop”.But Dell has registered “Hp Ipaq” and “Ipaq”, in an apparent attempt to piggyback on the popularity of its competitors’ products.”We believe it’s a misleading tactic,” an HP spokesman said.”If you’re promoting a product that you can’t supply you’re wasting the customers’ time and undermining the Google experience.”Dell’s portfolio of competitor brands includes “Palm”, “Treo”, “Tungsten” and “PalmOne”, all trademarks of the well-known handheld vendor. Also on the list is “Blackberry”, which is very close to the trademarked BlackBerry mobile email device.A spokeswoman for Palm said the company would not comment on the controversy. “We don’t have anything to contribute other than to say that in the US Dell sells Palm handhelds,” she said.Dell did not sell those products in Australia, she said.A Dell spokeswoman said the search terms were from previous campaigns that were still under way but Dell was not using competitor brand names in new campaigns.”Dell’s marketing is all about providing customers with choice,” she said.”Our test on bidding on a variety of terms is primarily designed to provide relevant information to aid customers in their purchase decisions.”Google AdWords, a program that allows businesses to buy space in prominent sponsored link boxes on Google’s search page, is important to PC vendors, whose customers do most of their research online.Experts said advertisers were looking for every possible advantage, including the use of competitors’ trademarks.Brisbane advertising consultant Ben Bradshaw said use of competitors’ keywords was common, and it worked.He encouraged his clients to protect all their brands and model names. “A company with lots of products should bid on all those terms,” he said.According to Google, it does not permit the use of competitors’ trademarks. A spokesman said any company that felt its trademark had been violated on AdWords should contact it.”We do not allow the use of trademarks as keywords if the trademark owner objects,” he said.

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July 26, 2006 at 11:20 AM