*NEWS*HP JOINS CRITICS OF DELL’s …….

[Anonymous]

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 11:22 AM