Derrick Sheilds

Google vs. Microsoft: What's Going on Here?

Jeff- I see your point however there is a difference between the syndicated ads that appear on domains and the advertisements that appear next to organic search results.

I am very familiar with arbitrage and domaining and while I'm personally against the whole concept, I do not think GOOG is crossing any lines by providing domainers with access to their ad feeds in this manner, because as I said this content is clearly differentiated from search results on the google.com domain.

So, where do companies cross the line? I think Yahoo! is coming close to the line in the current special k promotion. Considered a "Yahoo Shortcut", the promotion allows Kellog's advertisement to a.) get a Logo and b.) be labeled a "Yahoo Shortcut."

Here's another example, this time from Google. It's clever marketing and will garner a lot of attention, but perhaps needs to be labeled with more than just a "Google Promotion".