Antitrust concerns about Google's acquisition of radio advertising firm dMarc Broadcasting did not prevent the FTC from approving the deal, but the road ahead may be a rocky one for Google on the radio dial.

CanWest Interactive, operator of canada.com, has entered into a multi-year partnership with Google. The partnership will provide canada.com users with content and search related advertising, while offering Google’s advertisers access to canada.com’s extensive reach across the country.

Throughout last year Google fiddled with the programming behind AdWords in its never-ending quest both to offer surfers more relevant listings and to make more money for shareholders.

Matt Cutts of Google posted: By the way, there's another quote from me in that Red Herring story...

Apple continues its crackdown on small businesses that use its trademarks to sell products, this time targeting companies using Google AdWords containing Apple product names. One AdWords user received an email from Apple stating that the company "disapproved" of the advertiser's use of several Apple trademarks. When questioned on the reason behind this complaint, Google responded to the user that "The trademark owner of 'Mac' notified us that your AdWords ads were running with the trademarked term without the trademark owner's permission or other legal authority for doing so." The crackdown appears to be part of a larger strategy on Apple's part, which has also included legal pressure against iPod accessory makers to stop using the "iPod" mark.

Ever since Google introduced the Google Quality Score variable into their Adwords system Advertisers and PPC Account Managers have struggled with their accounts performing efficiently. When Google introduced the 'Quality Score' system it forced Adwords users to optimize their accounts so that its ads were most relevant to a users search. Thus, relevant ads increase the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) and more clicks increases the "bling" for Google. Supposedly, this is a win-win for both parties.

Google Goes Las Vegas from Robert X. Cringely at PBS looks at the anecdote of someone who was paying $0.10 per ad to promote his site and then tried to test new ideas with a different site, coming away perplexed about why paying more for the second site generated LESS traffic. Are things rigged, Cringley asks?

The email has been coming fast and furious as Macintosh developers, consultants, and resellers have been contacting me after reading "Apple Cracks Down on Google AdWords" in TidBITS-799. A number of people forwarded their entire discussions with Google AdWords Support, which has been amusing for just how similarly each interaction unfolded. Google did start to provide additional information to people who pushed hard last week, even acknowledging that the request had come from Apple and was specifically related to ads running in the European Union.

If you make a Mac-related product, or provide a Mac-related service like consulting, you're probably using some of Apple's trademarks like "Mac" and "Macintosh" in your advertising. Chances are you've never thought twice about doing that, since, after all, you're contributing to the vibrant economy that helps the Macintosh continue to be profitable for Apple - without software from independent developers and without Mac consultants, the Mac would quickly wither away.