Helen Southgate

Wednesday was a landmark day in the ongoing dispute between Louis Vuitton and Google.  The dispute is in relation to Google allowing other brands to bid on trademark terms.  The European Court of Justice announced on Wednesday that in their opinion  Google were not liable for any loss of sales or detriment to brand if a brand appears on another brands term. This is not a ruling as such but a big hint for what the ruling may be at the beginning of next year.

There are a number of other similar cases at the moment with M&S / Interflora being one of the most high profile.

So what is the issue?  The issue that brands have is that they feel that Google should protect the search space for direct searches on their brand and not allow other brands to bid on these terms.

Online and offline this is a hugely contestable issue.  Should consumers not have the right to make choices between brands? Should a brand have the right to be the only listing on an exact phrase search of their brand? You wouldn’t walk into Tesco and find Sainsbury’s with a kiosk in the car park which is essentially what this is.

Whatever the ruling is in the Google Vs Luis Vuitton case this will set a presedence for the search market and brands will need to make a decision on what their strategy will be .  So far most brands have declined to bid on competitor terms and in some industries there are gentlemans agreements in place but will be interesting to see if the results of this case change the way the brands behave.

The talk of the town at the moment is Real Time Search.  Google want it, Twitter has it and Facebook have just acquired it through FriendFeed, so what is all the fuss about?

The definition of Real Time Search is highly contested.  My personal view is that real time search can only be defined as being immediate, so if an event has just happened or news has just broken you should be able to find it immediately.  This is why users are turning to feeds such as Twitter and Facebook for up to date news rather than Google as Google will tend to source articles which are not generally instantaneous as have to be written and published.  Users more and more are looking to real time search, hence Google’s desire to catch up and provide it.

Real Time Search emphasises the switch that has happened over recent years from document-centric content to people-centric content.  The news we often rely on (and journalists now rely on) is from the public, unknown people writing what they know, see and hear.   This is not exactly new per se; journalists have been doing this for a long time, using people at the scene of an event to get immediate news.  The Sky News iPhone application even has a function whereby you can send Sky News a report from your iPhone.

It is clear to see that society behaviour is changing with the ease of acquiring information, people want to know what is happening immediately and they want it wherever they are.  You can see why the newspapers are suffering as people don’t want to wait a day now to read the news, they want it immediately.  However, newspapers should realise this and capitalise on being able to add comment, rounded views and interviews to news that people will likely already know.

I do wonder whether there will be a point that there is too much information and users can no longer get what they want quickly as they have to filter out masses of irrelevant content.  However, it appears the giants of search are already aware of this with Google releasing its upgraded Caffeine infrastructure and Microsoft launching Bing, both reported to deliver more relevant information sooner. Also, the kings of Real Time Search are developing their applications further, FriendFeed for example allows you to search for a term amongst your friends, although I struggle to see the use in that, but perhaps that’s more reflective of my circle of friends!