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Deloitte, which has 23 offices across the UK including Newcastle, is among the country's leading professional services firms » 
ClimateNE & Climate Change Schools Project support the move to a low-carbon, resilient economy and help businesses avoid risk and realise commercial opportunities. Posts by Jen Atkinson, Krista McKinzey and Harriet Thew » EIGHT years or so ago a refreshingly clean search interface developed by Larry Page and Sergey Bryn overtook the likes of Yahoo! and MSN to become the webâÂÂs most popular search engine.
At the time, many asked how the site was ever going to make any money. As Google powers forward, it makes you wonder whether those commentators were living in a parallel universe.
Of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing. ItâÂÂs doubtful that even Page and Bryn perceived then that Google would, within a decade, become one of the worldâÂÂs wealthiest and most powerful companies. But if information is what powers the world economy, then Google must be the 21st CenturyâÂÂs Standard Oil.
In 2006, GoogleâÂÂs advertising revenues in the UK overtook Channel 4. Late last year, it reached a par with ITV.
Although Google has a diverse product range these days, it is still the AdWords service on the search engine that provides its most significant revenue stream.
For the uninitiated, AdWords are the little text adverts that pop up to the right of your search results. Containing a short title (25 characters), two lines of description (each 35 characters) and a link to another website, they are triggered by your search query.
Such a powerful tool can be used in very damaging ways of course, which is why Google operates a procedure through which trade- mark owners can complain to Google about the unauthorised use of trade marks in AdWord advertisements. Google investigates and usually suspends the advertisement in question. The trade- mark term in dispute is also then blocked from further use in AdWords for the future.
If youâÂÂre looking to start using AdWords, you might want to use a competitorâÂÂs trademark term in the text of your advertisement. For example, if you enter the term âÂÂWaterstoneâÂÂsâÂÂ, an AdWord advert for WHSmith pops up.
Google still processes complaints relating to the use of trademarks in third party AdWord text, but since April, it no longer accepts complaints about keywords. And keywords that were previously the subject of a successful complaint will be unblocked.This has caused fury amongst some big retailers.
Teletext has threatened other travel agents with litigation if it finds its name used as a keyword. And a consortium of brandowners including Arcadia are thought to have discussed whether any action may be taken against Google.
ItâÂÂs a murky area. To be an infringement, the trademark in question must be used âÂÂas a signâÂ?.
Those brand owners would have to establish first that an infringement had occurred and this would mean convincing the courts that the keywords in question were a sign even though they didnâÂÂt appear in the adverts themselves.
The problem is that there hasnâÂÂt been much litigation on this subject. Of course, the mere existence of GoogleâÂÂs previous policy didnâÂÂt prevent the brandowners from litigating this issue before. They just chose not to, preferring the quicker and cheaper results generated by going direct to Google. So they have been hoisted by their own petard.
At times like this, I like to come back to the core function of a trade- mark â that it should act as a guarantee to the consumer of the trade origin of the goods or services to which it is applied. If you lived in London and wanted to buy electronics, you might head to Tottenham Court Road where youâÂÂd see all the biggest names side by side. I wonder whether WHSmithâÂÂs advert next to the search results for WaterstoneâÂÂs is really so different?
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