Montblanc Takes Google ...

Google has been going to great lengths to keep advertisers who sell counterfeit goods online out of its AdWords program , but as far as Montblanc , the Germany-based maker of ‘writing instruments’, watches, jewelry and whatnot, is concerned, they ought to be doing more. Montblanc-Simplo GmbH, as the holding is called, is taking Google to court in an effort to obtain the identity of a certain – or more – persistent counterfeit goods seller(s). TechCrunch has obtained the court documents, which make for an interesting read. Montblanc says it has received numerous complaints from customers who’ve been misled by keyword ads that appeared on Google.co.uk. According to the complaint, many were tricked into purchasing counterfeit Montblanc products from websites that were specifically designed to look like official Montblanc communication channels. The luxury goods company subsequently turned to Google UK in an effort to identify the advertisers, who were bidding on keywords like ‘montblanc pens’, but according to the complaint, the search giant’s UK office has consistently said that they simply don’t have access to that kind of information, directing Montblanc instead to the U.S. mothership. From the court docs: Montblanc has attempted to determine the identity of the Advertisers through numerous alternative means, with no success. Because the identity of the Advertisers is in the exclusive possession of Google, and Montblanc has no other source from which to obtain the requested information, Montblanc has no choice but to file this Complaint in Equity for a Bill of Discovery in order to enforce its trademark rights. Once Montblanc has identified the Advertisers through this Bill of Discovery against Google, it intends to file a lawsuit to enforce its trademark rights against the identified Advertisers. Without the requested information, however, Montblanc does not know who the Advertisers are and therefore does not know whom it needs to sue to enforce its trademark rights. As Montblanc points out in its complaint, it has been using the ‘montblanc’ mark for a wide range of products since its founding in 1906, making it one of the world’s well-known trademarks. Understandably, the company asserts that the sale of counterfeit goods, bearing the ‘montblanc’ trademarks, has caused it “significant reputational and financial harm”. For the record, Montblanc acknowledges that Google UK has been responsive to its complaints in discussions dating back to September 2011, and that the search company repeatedly told them that they “removed the offending ads and taking action against the Advertisers”. The only problem is that they keep coming back, and Montblanc is getting desperate. From an earlier Google blog post , describing the game of cat and mouse: AdWords is just a conduit between advertisers and consumers and we can’t know whether any particular item out of the millions advertised is counterfeit or not. Of course, we do more than simply respond to brand owners’ removal requests. We use their feedback to help us tune a set of sophisticated automated tools, which analyse thousands of signals along every step of the advertising process and help prevent bad ads from ever seeing the light of day. We devote significant engineering and machine resources in order to prevent violations of ads policies, including counterfeiting. In fact, we invested over $60 million last year alone, and, in the last 6 months of 2010, more than 95% of accounts removed for counterfeits came down based on our own detection efforts. No system is perfect, but brand owner feedback has helped us improve over time – as our system gets more data about ads it has misclassified before, it gets better at counteracting new ways that bad guys try to cloak their behaviour. While our systems get better over time, counterfeiting remains a complex challenge, and we keep investing in anti-counterfeiting measures. After all, a Google user duped by a fake is far less likely to click on another Google ad in the future. Ads for counterfeits aren’t just bad for the real brand holder – they’re bad for users who can end up unknowingly buying sub-standard products, and they’re bad for Google too. This makes sense; Google has nothing to gain from counterfeit advertisers in the long term. In Montblanc’s view, however, Google should be more actively helping them determine the identity of counterfeit advertisers by handing over the contact and financial details they store – due to the nature of the AdWords program – so that the company can name them as defendants in litigation. We’ll be following this case with eagle eyes. (Photo courtesy of Luigi Crespo Photography on Flickr )

Keen On… Walter Isaacso...

Who, exactly, was Steve Jobs? Walter Isaacson’s   Steve Jobs has sparked an intriguing debate about the identity of the real Jobs. According to The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell, Isaacson’s biography proved that Jobs was a “tweaker” – somebody who took other people’s ideas and perfected them. But Apple watchers like Daring Fireball’s John Gruber strongly disagreed, arguing that Jobs was anything but a tweaker and taking Isaacson to task for not telling us what Jobs “actually did” and who he was. Who better to resolve this row than Isaacson himself, who came into our San Francisco TechCrunchTV studio yesterday to talk about his best-selling book and to answer his critics. No, Isaacson explained, Gladwell is wrong – Jobs wasn’t primarily a tweaker. But Gruber is wrong too, Isaacson added for good measure, in saying that Steve Jobs failed to explain who Steve Jobs really was. Steve was essentially “an artist”, Issaacson told me; that’s the key to unraveling Apple’s enigmatic icon. This is the first piece of a four part interview with Isaacson. Tomorrow, Jobs’ biographer explains to me Steve Jobs’ historic influence on our culture.

MasterCard And Intel Pa...

Intel and credit card giant MasterCard are announcing a multi-year strategic partnership this evening, which aims to provide a more secure and simple way for consumers to pay for products online. The two companies will be working to combine MasterCard’s expertise in payment processing and commerce with Intel’s strengths in chip-based security. So how are these two companies joining forces? Details are still being disclosed, but MasterCard and Intel are working on providing a safer and simpler checkout process for online merchants and consumers using Intel’s Ultrabook devices and future generations of Intel-based PCs. Another area where Intel and MasterCard will be working together is in the area of emerging payments technologies, including MasterCard’s PayPass and Intel’s Identity Protection Technology. PayPass is a payment method that lets you make purchases without having to swipe the magnetic strip on your card or provide your signature. The technology uses NFC to to transmit information. Intel’s Identity Protection Technology can allow consumers to use two-factor authentication and hardware-based display protection, which provides increased online security against malware. Additionally, when used with an Intel IPT-enabled reader, consumers will be able to pay for online purchases with a simple tap of their PayPass-enabled card, tag, or smart phone on an Ultrabook device. “MasterCard is constantly working to improve the shopping experience for consumers and merchants,” said Ed McLaughlin, chief emerging payments officer, MasterCard. “The collaboration with Intel will deliver enhanced security and faster checkout – with the convenience of a simple click or tap.” McLaughlin adds that this is a starting point for the two companies and there are future collaborations to come. “This partnership is about how to make the payments process more secure without having to change the experience of consumer,” he explains.

E-Commerce: Beyond The ...

Gautum Gupta is an associate at General Catalyst Partners, where he focuses on financial services, enterprise IT, consumer services, and new media. You follow him @gRamblings . For all the excitement around commerce these days, there have been only a few really big changes in the last 100 years. Sears pioneered the mail-order catalog, chains like Walmart consolidated big box retail, and Amazon brought inventory online. After more than 10 years of growth, e-commerce only accounts for about 8% of total commerce in the US. Clearly, we have a long way to go in moving more commerce online. I believe the next evolution in e-commerce—what some refer to as “social commerce”—will use customer identity and data to better personalize and serve customers well beyond what Amazon has done to date. Commerce, both offline and online, has historically been largely anonymous and impersonal. Offline, customers walk into stores, see the exact same merchandise, are greeted by employees who don’t recognize them, and are all bound to the same terms and conditions on the back of every purchase receipt. Online, the pen and paper of the old mail-order catalog were replaced with drop-down menus and search boxes. Amazon and other sites emerged to provide customers with anything they were looking for at low prices. As disruptive as the online catalog has been, the success of these online stores is measured by three and four letter acronyms: LTV “lifetime value” and COCA “cost of customer acquisition.” However, a shopping experience cannot be summarized entirely by metrics. When a customer enters a department store to try on new shoes, she may feel the hesitation of not knowing whether it will match with her wardrobe. Or, she might serendipitously spot a pair of heels out of the corner of her eye, but feels frustrated to learn that the pair is not what she expected, not in her exact size, or the deal is just not good enough. These types of shopping roadblocks—psychic swings from purchasing intent to hesitation or frustration—matter more than metrics can describe. The next evolution in e-commerce will evade these roadblocks by knowing this particular customer’s identity and leveraging the data she has made public (explicit & implicit preferences) to create a more personal shopping experience for her. Knowing her identity isn’t restricted to the customer’s name or basic demographic information, but could also include his or her family and friends’ purchasing history, the customer’s likes, style, brand preferences, and influences. In the retail context, her identity allows the retailer to build a relationship with the consumer. When Sears first sold watches through the mail, to build trust with consumers they promised customers that every watch sold would be accurate for at least six years after purchase or else they would fix it free of charge. Just as Sears did in the late 19th Century, the best online retailers today make promises to us: they promise to show and help us discover merchandise we’ll love (personalization), they promise to help us decide what to buy (tools), and they promise that we’ll be delighted by the entire experience, even after we buy (service). Physical retailers operate under the constraint of finite shelf space and must hope to catch the busy consumer’s eye. In the digital world, with endless choices, truly successful companies will excel at helping consumers find and discover great products. Some companies will even enable consumers to create or customize what they want. Gemvara , a custom jewelry seller, starts by funneling consumers into a specific boutique and then immerses the consumer in customizing a design that catches her eye. One interesting trend is companies blatantly asking customers to fill out quizzes and surveys that eventually inform their merchandise selection. ShoeDazzle has built a large business around style quizzes that engage women in a fun experience to define their personal style. They use the results of these quizzes and their team of curators like Kim Kardashian to build a showroom specific to each customer. Going forward, by using the customer’s past purchase history, likes, and friend’s purchases, retailers will be able to create a completely personalized experience from the very first visit to their homepage. Beyond personalization, J. Hilburn , an e-commerce company providing men’s custom clothing, employs a network of Style Advisors who can take their customer’s measurements to help deliver on the company’s promise of a perfect fit. Given that J. Hilburn’s shirts are fully customizable, knowing your measurements is critical in producing a superior product experience. Not every category requires a stylist to help consumers decide what to buy. BirchBox , built to help consumers discover new beauty products, creates content around products and categories they sell to educate consumers on what products to use for various skin / hair types. In addition to offering the tools to help customers pick the right products, social commerce leaders will excel at providing a better service experience. Proving that customer service extends beyond the checkout process, Modcloth has enabled quick exchanges for its customers whereby customers don’t need to wait for their return to be processed before receiving an exchanged item; instead Modcloth instantly sends a replacement. While it may seem minor, this builds an amazing amount of trust with the consumer. The future of e-commerce will not solely be defined by how to drive down your cost of acquisition or push up the customer’s lifetime value; it will be defined by the personal relationships retailers have built with customers. Efforts to try to optimize lifetime value without understanding the customer will only generate short term success. The next phase of retailing will not succeed by selling the same goods in the same way to different people. Consumers are willing to share data with retailers in exchange for a radically better shopping experience. The internet has enabled us to move beyond the constraints of the mail-order catalog and physical store while making it easier to acquire data on customers. By understanding these two factors, online retailers will greatly increase the portion of online spend from 8% of total commerce. CrunchBase Information Gautam Gupta BirchBox J. Hilburn ShoeDazzle Information provided by CrunchBase

Ping Identity Raises $2...

Ping Identity , a company that creates secure, cloud based sign-in platform for enterprise applications, has raised $21 million in funding from Triangle Peak Partners, Silicon Valley Bank, and existing investors Appian Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, General Catalyst Partners, SAP Ventures and Volition Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $34 million. Ping’s PingFederate allows employees, consumers, customers or partners access to multiple cloud resources using a single username and password. PingConnect eliminates passwords for virtually every major SaaS application including Salesforce, Google Apps, Concur, SuccessFactors, Workday and many more and lets companies manage user identities via single sign-on that works across all of these applications. Founded in 2002, Ping Identity has more than 600 customers including 40 of the Fortune 100 and 150-plus SaaS partners already use Ping Identity’s cloud identity management products. The new investment will be used towards product development, and sales and marketing efforts. Not only is the online identity market a billion dollar business, but its set to become a federal issue if the U.S. government pursues its strategy of a “trusted-identity ecosystem.” It should be interesting to see if Ping Identity (and its competitors like Okta ) play a part in this potential initiative. CrunchBase Information Ping Identity Corporation Information provided by CrunchBase