On Wednesday Google announced separate trademark policy changes in that affect the UK, Ireland and Canada and the rest of Europe differently.
Reading about the changes on the web, I’m really surprised how many articles have got this one wrong. Mostly it seems to stem from an inability to distinguish that different policies have applied, and will apply, between UK and Ireland, and the rest of Europe. (Google has a helpful list of which countries it considers to be in Europe. To add to the confusion, some places on the list are in South America or the Antartic.)
Anyway, here’s a couple of charts that hopefully explain what’s changing.
Policy before September 14th 2010
Policy after September 14th 2010
The change happening to Europe (excluding UK and Ireland) happened in the UK in May 2008. Chaos was predicted, but failed to materialise. I wrote about it before the change and made some observations after it was implemented. I think the comments I made then still stand.
Share this post







[…] trademark cases in court. In fact—despite the likelihood of additional litigation—Google has expanded its policy of selling trademarked keywords to Europe, arguing that it produces competitive ads that […]
[…] a key European court case over trademarked keywords in March. Since then, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has expanded its policy of selling ads against trademarked keywords in […]
[…] of the trademark cases in court. In fact-despite the likelihood of additional litigation-Google has expanded its policy of selling trademarked keywords to Europe, arguing that it produces competitive ads that […]