Farnell try to con people trying to download kicad into buying eagle - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 16, 2012, 04:15:03 pm
content: please take a look at the attached, I was just going to check out to see if there was a newer version of KiCad to download and put Kicad into google. Look at the attached, the first result is an ad from Farnell that has uk.farnell.com/kicad on it. clicking on it takes you to a page on farnell selling eagle. If you actually put uk.farnell.com/kicad into your browser it just takes you to a search error page on farnell suggesting you were looking for "nicad" and alternative results for batteries and charges. Is this not a very sleazy way of farnell trying to get people to buy eagle when they actually wanted to download kicad for free ?me thinks I may be ordering parts elsewhere in future, unlike farnell some of us have ethics !

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 16, 2012, 04:43:54 pm
content: Competitors buying adwords for with competitors' names is pretty much standard practice.I don't think many people looking for Kicad would accidentally buy Eagle.

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 16, 2012, 04:56:44 pm
content: It isn't even specifically targeting kicad. That is their generic adwords deal that links to a search of farnells website for the specified word. If you go to uk.farnell.com/Kicad you get a 'no results found' search result page, not the eagle home page.So while I have no problem with them buying the kicad adword and using it with a non-deceptive ad for eagle, this looks like an unintentional side effect of some automated process that generates their adword list.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 16, 2012, 05:08:20 pm
content: no ! I have placed adds myself with google, ALL of the text in the add is put there by them, you see most clever people put the website address in the text so that people may type that in instead of clicking the ad and them paying. This is entirely deceptive and was meant so

author: fax8
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 16, 2012, 05:08:51 pm
content: Quote from: ejeffrey on February 16, 2012, 04:56:44 pmYou are getting it wrong. If you click on the ad link you'll be shown the buy Eagle webpage. Showing theuk.farnell.com/Kicadas link is a smart move to let people thing they'd get a webpage about KiCad, while they won't.This is not automatic nor incidental at all.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 16, 2012, 05:11:17 pm
content: they have no reason to go near the word kicad, it is a silly attempt to get people to do what they want, and as stupid as the whole element14 thing

author: stl
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 16, 2012, 05:12:58 pm
content: Unrelated hint:Alt + PrtSc only captures the active window to the Clipboard

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 16, 2012, 05:13:10 pm
content: I propose that as a protest we google "kicad" and keep clicking on the ad, that will teach them !

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 16, 2012, 05:14:05 pm
content: Quote from: stl on February 16, 2012, 05:12:58 pmok nice to know, I thought of cropping it but was at work and about to leave

author: Bored@Work
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 16, 2012, 07:52:27 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on February 16, 2012, 04:43:54 pmAnd depending on where you are, people have paid heavy fines for doing this. But a project like KiCad likely hasn't the money to hire lawyers to rip them another one.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 16, 2012, 10:08:18 pm
content: Quote from: fax8 on February 16, 2012, 05:08:51 pmYep, I think this is deliberate act by some E14 marketing droid.This is very poor form indeed.Step 1 response complete: tweet them and see what they respond with.Dave.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 16, 2012, 10:25:44 pm
content: well i posted to the kicad developer group, i think they may be a bit pissed off, I'll be looking elsewhere first for parts in the future.i think the ad has gone infact, if i google kicad now it don't show up - anyone else ?

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 16, 2012, 11:43:47 pm
content: I'm probably more annoyed that this is the direction Google continues to head than than I am with E14 or any of the billion advertisers trying to buy advantage. There is a line of what is and is not acceptable, we all understand that advertising pays to keep the lights on, but when paid ads begin to detract from the ability to search for desired content a boundary has been crossed.If I wanted to have my searches come up with bucketloads of unrelated crap I'd just load some hijack malware or use Bing!

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 07:07:08 am
content: Yes there is that too. I used to be able to find anything on the net I wanted to in minutes, these days it is very had to get through all the crap, the adverts and worse the websites setup just any old content which is often wrong or just meaningless so that they can put ads on the pages (think PC pitstop and their sensational claims like viruses can make your printer catch fire).Still farnell did this all on their own of their own free will. When you run an add campain YOU choose the words to associate your adds with and you can choose the word to NOT associate your adds with, I did this for example when I ran some adverts for rotaract, I blocked adverts for the search term of Rotaract because genuine search results will op up for it anyway, many companies don't do this, you google their name and an add pops up and then a genuine search result for the same page under it - more fool them

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 09:03:44 am
content: It is not just Farnell doing this the other day I wanted some drivers for an old packard bell computer and could not find them on the official web site so I used Google. I came to a site that looked for all the world like a repository for old drivers and it even gave what appears to be a link to download all the drivers as a single file, click on the link and it loads an installer package for Driver Detective. I go to about a dozen other sites for the drivers and every one is the same it is a cloak to get you to Driver Detective. I have still not got the Drivers. Infuriating is the word for such underhand behavior.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 09:07:25 am
content: Quote from: G7PSK on February 17, 2012, 09:03:44 amyes that pisses me off too. But what farnell have done is to specifically target ONE specific open source project and rip it off knowing damn well that they can't do anything about it. That is very below the belt, it's not like we don't know about eagle and it's not like people are trying to force kicad onto anyone

author: harnon
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 09:09:17 am
content: Quote from: Simon on February 17, 2012, 07:07:08 amMy pet hate is searching for a review of an electronic product. E.g. if you type "[New product] +review" into google for many products, the top four pages of results are form shopbot or something like that and the only thing they have resembling a review is a button saying "write a review here... there are 0 reviews". I think we can thank SEO gurus for that chestnut.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 09:22:19 am
content: Quote from: Simon on February 17, 2012, 09:07:25 amI agree, this seems very deliberate.One could say all's fair in war, if it was another corporate competitor like DesignSpark for example. But targeting a small open source community effort is just poor form indeed.Element 14 have some explaining to do.Dave.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 09:30:25 am
content: i emailed them and pointed out that they would be in court by now if it were another company, as far as I'm concerned it goes along the lines of fraud.As i say I've placed google ads myself and know how it works, that ad was deliberately done, when you run a campaign you can make as many ad units as you want with separate keywords as well as NON keywords

author: ChrisKiwi
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 10:15:01 am
content: Quote from: Simon on February 16, 2012, 10:25:44 pmTry Mouser, I put an order in at 3 AM on the 15th and it arrived this morning, 17th. Mouser is in Texas, USA and I'm in Auckland, New Zealand. I thought I'd check were the order was at this morning and to my surprise it cleared customs at 8:30 AM this morning and arrived at 9:50 AM. The freight cost $0 and delivered by Fedex - I think thats pretty good service compared o Fastways Couriers in Auckland. I ordered some stuff from a company on the other side of the city mid afternoon on the 14th, they emailed me on the 15th to say the goods have been sent - still waiting.... Fastways.... yeah right! ... Oh I found Mouser cheaper than E14 on everything I bought and in some cases a lot cheaper!

author: ChrisKiwi
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 10:24:03 am
content: Quote from: Simon on February 16, 2012, 04:15:03 pmhttp://kicad.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Pagethere is a new release of KiCAD, 22nd Jan

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 10:28:57 am
content: Quote from: ChrisKiwi on February 17, 2012, 10:15:01 amprice depends on where you are farnell have been better or as good as so far but i'll be double checking in future as i always oder stuff by the 100 so more scope for price breaks

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 10:29:24 am
content: Quote from: G7PSK on February 17, 2012, 09:03:44 amOn a related note, I've noticed if you try searching for schematics for some device, Google retardedly thinks the "manual" is what you're looking for. There is ahugedifference between a user manual and a schematic!!

author: baljemmett
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 01:24:23 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on February 17, 2012, 09:30:25 amThey have similar adverts running for commercial competitors as well -- perhaps it might be worth checking whether they are actually being dragged through the courts as a result, before you try making that argument to them(This sort of competition-targeted advertising seems pretty common commercially -- some of work's competitors engage in it too -- which isn't to say it's a good thing, of course. I would imagine someone at Farnell just looked for a list of competing products and gave it to a data-entry droid with instructions to create an advert targeting each of them; you could make a reasonable argument that including open-source products on that list is a shitty thing to do, but I don't think you can assume they maliciously targeted just that one project.)

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 04:58:53 pm
content: arguing that they do it to others does not make it more right to do it to kicad. Considering they made all that effort to create element14 that was supposed to get personal with hobbiest and engineers you'd think they think before trashing an open source project

author: baljemmett
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 05:03:42 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on February 17, 2012, 04:58:53 pmWhich would be exactly why I didn't suggest anything of the sort, of course, merely that they haven't singled out one product to target as you seemed to be claiming.

author: Hypernova
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 05:05:48 pm
content: Quote from: ChrisKiwi on February 17, 2012, 10:15:01 amThat's news to me, when I was still in Auckland they typically took 5 working days minimum. But then that was 2+ years ago.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 05:08:23 pm
content: Quote from: baljemmett on February 17, 2012, 05:03:42 pmeither way they chose to target kicad, even if they looked up all of their competitors they "chose" kicad possibly along with others knowing that it is an opensource project. try googleing the other commercial packages if you want to see, I don't know any off the top of my head. However you look at it this was deliberately deceptive

author: baljemmett
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 05:23:45 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on February 17, 2012, 05:08:23 pmThe first commercial name I tried came up with a "Looking for OrCAD? We have Eagle!" advert, for what it's worth.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 05:27:21 pm
content: ok fine, must admit I can't get it up myself but then the kicad one does not always come up.

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 11:08:42 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on February 17, 2012, 05:27:21 pmBest not to muddy the argument with any personal ailments.QuoteThat's all part of the many Google algorithm that take into account search phrase, history, location and all manner of other variables.What cannot understand is why these practices are considered worse for Kicad but OK if its against another large commercial player. The fact others may be in a better position to retaliate doesn't make things any more acceptable.If I search for Kicad, or Eagle or Altuim that is what I want to find! If I do a more generalised search for CAD or PCB software I expect to see them all. Isn't that how a search engine is supposed to work? If Google and/or their advertisers continue to undermine this, then ultimately the search tool becomes useless.Advertising in the periphery is acceptable, messing with the search results is not! Brickbats to Google and any advertiser who tries to skew search results.Television broadcasters and advertisers refused to accept that pissing of viewers with saturation advertising was counter productive, they can all produce statistics to support how successful such methods can be. At the same time they are trying to work out why television viewing is on the decline. Idiots, any fool can see why and yet it's a concept beyond the grasp of marketing types.Google became the search engine of choice because of its ability to discriminate and obtain required results, the more Google becomes tainted the more the marketplace is opened up for alternatives.

author: harnon
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2012, 11:44:54 pm
content: Quote from: Uncle Vernon on February 17, 2012, 11:08:42 pmI suppose people see it as analogous to stealing money from a charity vs stealing from a bank...

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 18, 2012, 08:16:06 am
content: Quote from: harnon on February 17, 2012, 11:44:54 pmsort of, I don't appreciate them doing it to comercial competitors either, as uncle vernon said it just makes searching pointless and like I said earlier I see a general decline in the quality of the internet. but it says a lot for farnell all round, I wonder if RS are doing the same to them ?

author: paf
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2012, 09:29:17 am
content: No, Farnell is not trying to con people.Do you believe in all of the links that appear on google?Example:When I search for FPGAs the first link is from ASICS.ASICS Running Shoes....Wonder what socket I need to connect one in a board?They don't need power supply, and that's a big advantage!My best regardspaf

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 18, 2012, 11:42:54 am
content: So your claim is that a competitor is paying to send traffic to Farnell's website?

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 18, 2012, 11:49:26 am
content: yea kicad pay for adverts on farnell, that would be the day

author: Bored@Work
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2012, 12:37:10 pm
content: Quote from: alm on February 18, 2012, 11:42:54 amNo, his claim is he doesn't understand how search engines work, but wants you to share his misunderstanding.

author: siliconmix
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2012, 12:41:10 pm
content: try this search string in google images "open source pcb layout" it seems to bypass a lot of crap

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 18, 2012, 12:54:32 pm
content: Quote from: paf on February 18, 2012, 09:29:17 amYes, they are.They are using a bogus URL to think they have a page on their site to do with KiCAD. They don't. It's not too much unlike bait and switch really.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switchIf they are just buying keywords to put an Eagle ad at the top of a "KiCAD" search term, then fair enough, everyone does that.But they are clearly trying to con people into thinking that they have information about KiCAD on their site, that's a con.Dave.

author: mobbarley
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2012, 03:14:43 pm
content: found some more keywords for them.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 18, 2012, 03:16:02 pm
content: Quote from: mobbarley on February 18, 2012, 03:14:43 pmthey should suggest batteries and chargers.....

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2012, 06:47:31 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on February 17, 2012, 09:03:44 amTry putting the following after the search string: -DriverDetective -Driver -DetectiveThat should eliminate all of those annoying hits.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 21, 2012, 04:29:51 pm
content: hm looks like a few people got upset:http://www.varesano.net/I think he is one of the kicad developers and that image is my screenshot (i know by the location shown)

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2012, 05:53:31 pm
content: I thought Google were supposed to be pro-open source? It looks like they're easily sold.This is why some open source projects have trademarked the names of their software: Firefox is one for example.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 21, 2012, 05:55:22 pm
content: MONEY speaks louder than anything and google don't review every add you setup or have time to look into it's ethics

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 21, 2012, 05:57:29 pm
content: I'll tell you how much farnell actually have to do with kicad: put kicad and farnell into google, you get a whole page of results for this topic and messages on the kicad message archives and the blog entry I linked to, and all in a matter of days

author: metalphreak
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2012, 03:22:03 pm
content: If i search for "Molex connector" I get an ad with a link (the text at least) to "australia.rs-online.com/Connectors" which also doesn't exist.The way google ads work, they would submit a product link, and a list of search keywords associated with it. Then the google text ad just haswww.website.com/KEYWORDYOUSEARCHEDWITHHEREI don't think it's a deliberate attempt to mislead anyone by having Kicad in the text there, but it is a by-product of them using competing products as keywords for advertising Eagle.It's a generic keyword thing. In my example it would be "Looking for Connectors? uk.farnell.com/Connectors We stock a large range of connectors blah blah"Farnell needs to remove Kicad as a key search term, as well as any others that are specific product names.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 22, 2012, 03:45:21 pm
content: farnell have control over ALL of the text on the add, if they choose to use an automated system that makes it looks like they have pages they don't that is their call (as it is to be on the receiving end of the trouble that makes). They could just put in a sales pitch phrase instead of the non existent web address.

author: Semantics
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2012, 05:30:13 pm
content: Couldn't everyone offended just search and click their ad several times a day and cost Farnell money? That'll probably get them to stop, paying for an advertising campaign that isn't bringing in any revenue.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 22, 2012, 05:42:12 pm
content: Quote from: Semantics on February 22, 2012, 05:30:13 pmim doing it, I did suggest that further back

author: mobbarley
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2012, 07:49:03 pm
content: you are just making my small orders even more expensive

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 22, 2012, 09:27:14 pm
content: Quote from: Semantics on February 22, 2012, 05:30:13 pmNo, it's won't help, in fact it will only encourage them to do it again.Their KPI for Eagle advertising will go through the roof and they will think they are doing the right thing.They have no way to differentiate between fake clicks and real clicks.And they have an infinite amount of money to spend on advertising.Don't encourage them, much better off flooding them with nasty emails telling them what they are doing is wrong.Dave.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 22, 2012, 10:23:43 pm
content: well I emailed them and got a passive automated reply aimed at looking like a genuine reply to a request about parts, I replied somewhat annoyed and got a reply saying they were taking it seriously, week later the ads are still up.

author: chiva
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: February 22, 2012, 11:33:31 pm
content: Hi everyone!I told Farnell Spain about this a week ago (yes, the same ad is in spanish) through twitter and in 5 minutes I had an answer.Yep, Farnell Spain marketer/community manager answers very promptly to any queries.They say that they were aware of this problem, that the term was included by mistake and they were working on solving this.I suppose this is handled by Farnell headquarters, and that it isn't one of its top priorities.https://twitter.com/#!/Farnell_ES/statuses/170467045929005056

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 23, 2012, 06:49:20 am
content: Quote from: chiva on February 22, 2012, 11:33:31 pmI don't care what their priorities are, I am the customer !