AdWords is the sincerst form of flattery.
15 10 2006Update: This blog post was originally pulled. This post explains why I pulled it back.
One of our consultants did a search for “readify” on Google last night and notice that one of the other Microsoft partners in Sydney had purchased the “readify” AdWord from Google.
You’ve got hand it to Adam, he certainly runs an aggressive marketing campaign and I’d be worried if he somehow managed to push us off the top rankings in the search results.
Still - can someone purchasing your AdWord be considered a form of flattery?
Personally, I find it in bad taste.
Hi Ayende,
I guess its what AdWords allows you to do. My blog post was just to let Adam know that we noticed
Oh he’s a naughty boy!
Isn’t that considerd trade mark infringement?
I’m assuming he’s actaully purchased the SSW adword as well…..
Hi Mitch,
He has removed the AdWord for Readify now (not sure why). I don’t think he had one for SSW.
[...] Upon reflection, I’ve decided to put the post back up because so many times I’ve complained about people that pull their blog posts, and I got a bit of criticism about that. Its actually better to be up front about this stuff - this post is to explain the situation. [...]
Hey Mitch…not one but two Community Server competitors have bought the AdWord for “Community Server”. =)
Hi Alex,
What text did they put for the actual advertisement? There are a whole bunch of questions not so much around ethics, but what is actually healthy for your own business form an advertising point of view.
The text seems pretty neutral. I mean, there isn’t anything misleading in the text (from my perspective anyway).
One thing I’ve been thinking about is whether or not this form of “competitive advertising” is possible/likely to happen in other mediums (say non-Internet forms of advertising). I don’t think it is. The only thing I could think of would be someone paying a magazine, for example, to place a competitive ad and then have the index mislead the reader to believe that the ad was for another product. Of course, I don’t believe any magazine publisher would do such a thing and this is definitely a knock on Google/AdWords in my opinion.
Hi Alex,
Yeah - I don’t really have a problem with it. Its just a curious approach and I don’t think its that effective. I am sure that Adam will probably point out his views when he produces the rules. Its probably one of these two edged sword things, the edges get sharper the smaller the community is.
classic stuff!!