Saturday, August 18, 2007

To Whose Aadvantage is This?

The airline industry has had its fare share of wars over the years, mostly about fares, sometimes with the unions and even with passengers but now t seems the 'keyword wars; have broken out with Google. American Airlines is suing the Internet company over its sale of keywords ads for rivals triggered by its own trademarks. American filed a lawsuit Thursday in Fort Worth seeking unspecified damages.

According to American a Google visitor who enters certain words or phrases that American have trademarked - for example, Aadvantage, its frequent-flier program - will get links to American's Web site but also its rivals under "sponsored links". These are the targeted ads that appear alongside the regular search results.

American say the results could confuse consumers and divert customers away from American's own site. On googling 'American Airlines' and 'Aadvantage ' we found no keyword ads for any of their rivals.......maybe google is being pre-emptive.

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