Mac developer M. P. found this out the hard way last June when, practically overnight, Google stopped carrying search ads for one of his company's new products. The reason? They claimed his ads were infringing on Apple's trademarks. As a longtime member of Apple's Developer Connection, M. P. begged to differ. He even got Apple's attorneys to say as much in a letter to Google.

Google responded with a thank you note to the Apple attorney but did not reactivate the ads. When we asked about the ads, they wrote to say they didn't get the letter. I guess they didn't see the cc to us in the note to Apple. We asked Apple to send the letter again. As before, after receipt of said authorization, a note from Google to Apple acknowledging the authorization and... then... nothing.

M. P. tried again to get Google to reinstate the ads, resubmitting them multiple times for further review. Weeks passed. Finally, nearly two months after the de-activation, his ads were quietly reinstated. That was too late for his company, which had designed a Google-centric marketing plan for an upcoming trade show.

In the search ad business they call this getting "."

Last month, the New York Times ran a profile of - a "business-to-business search engine" . Sourcetool owner Dan Savage had been spending about US$500K a month on Google AdWords to drive traffic to his site, and pocketing a little over $600K per month in pay-per-click AdSense revenue -- a tidy little profit.