Robert Cox has a piece running in today's Examiner which correctly notes that Google banned advertising from the campaign of Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins (Maine) who used the liberal group, MoveOn.org in the content of the ad.

Here's an excerpt of Robert's piece which articulates the controversy:

Google bans anti-MoveOn.org ads

Internet giant Google has banned advertisements critical of MoveOn.org, the far-left advocacy group that caused a national uproar last month when it received preferential treatment from The New York Times for its “General Betray Us” message.

The ads banned by Google were placed by a firm working for Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ re-election campaign. Collins is seeking her third term.

Earlier this week, Google told Lance Dutson, president of Maine Coast Designs, that the ads he placed for Collins had been removed and would not be allowed to resume because they violated Google’s trademark policy.

Google’s Web site states, “Google takes allegations of trademark infringement very seriously and, as a courtesy, we’re happy to investigate matters raised by trademark owners.” That suggests Google acted in response to a complaint by MoveOn.org.

The banned advertisements said, “Susan Collins is MoveOn’s primary target. Learn how you can help” and “Help Susan Collins stand up to the MoveOn.org money machine.” The ads linked to Collins’ campaign Web site with a headline reading “MoveOn.org has made Susan Collins their #1 target.” The Collins Web site claims that MoveOn has contributed $250,000 to her likely Democratic opponent and has run nine ads against her costing nearly $1 million. The Web site also displays MoveOn.org’s controversial “General Betray Us” ad.

Cox quotes a lawyer as stating that Google’s actions are “troubling” because it appears to be selective removal by Google to defend MoveOn.org.

But let’s not jump to that assumption. Instead let's drill in to this a bit more to see if there’s another explanation for Google’s actions.

First, Lance Dutson, also a friend, used a smart strategy to help drive traffic to Senator Collins' site by tapping in to a hot buzzword these days among conservative circles, "MoveOn.org."

However, “MoveOn.org” and likely "MoveOn" are registered trademarks which are also registered with Google as being trademarks. Therefore it is a violation of Google's terms of service to allow any advertiser other than MoveOn.org to use the ads in the content of the AdWord.

In need of an official clarification, I contacted Google's Adam Kovacevich for an explanation and he told me:

Google is committed to providing an advertising service with fair and consistent policies that benefit our users, advertisers, partners, and Google. To achieve this goal, we maintain high standards for ads accepted into the AdWords program. All AdWords ads, political or otherwise, must follow our editorial guidelines and content policy. Google applies policy for political ads equally, regardless of the political views represented by the ads submitted.

Under our advertising policies, companies and organizations that can demonstrate that they own trademark rights can request that their trademarked terms not be used in any ad text. In such cases, we will require that the advertiser remove the trademark from the ad text, although we do not disable keywords in response to a trademark complaint. MoveOn had made such a request. If ads are running on Google that do include trademark terms, this is likely because either the trademark owner has not submitted a complaint, or because the advertiser is authorized to use the trademark.

We encourage political candidates and campaigns with questions about these policies to contact our Elections Team at elections@google.com.

In other words, a company or organization which has a registered trademark, like Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Townhall.com, etc. can request from Google that no one except them can use its trademarked name in its advertising program.

Makes sense.

This "controversy" is a good time to note that if you work or represent a company or organization with a registered trademark, it might be in your best interest to submit a similar request through the proper channels to Google to ensure that someone's not using your intellectual property.

However, as I said before, this was a smart move by Dutson to help drive traffic to Senator Collins' website. Google has informed me that the policy above does not apply to the bidding of key words which trigger your ads but only to the content of the ads themselves.

Let's hope that a little creativity from Dutson will get some similar, effective ads up in the near future to ensure that conservatives in Maine are clicking the ads.

For example, would "Move On" violate their trademark? That's a question for the lawyers.

UPDATE 5:16 PM, Oct. 12: Google has just posted a blog post explaining its policy.