Farnell try to con people trying to download kicad into buying eagle

[baljemmett]

arguing that they do it to others does not make it more right to do it to kicad.

Which 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.

[Hypernova]

.... I'll be looking elsewhere first for parts in the future.

Try 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!

That's news to me, when I was still in Auckland they typically took 5 working days minimum. But then that was 2+ years ago.

[Simon]

arguing that they do it to others does not make it more right to do it to kicad.

Which 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.

either 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

[baljemmett]

try googleing the other commercial packages if you want to see, I don't know any off the top of my head.

The first commercial name I tried came up with a "Looking for OrCAD?  We have Eagle!" advert, for what it's worth.

[Simon]

ok fine, must admit I can't get it up myself but then the kicad one does not always come up.

[Uncle Vernon]

ok fine, must admit I can't get it up myself

Best not to muddy the argument with any personal ailments.   

but then the kicad one does not always come up.

That'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.

[harnon]

What cannot understand is why these practices are considered worse for Kicad but OK if its against another large commercial player.

I suppose people see it as analogous to stealing money from a charity vs stealing from a bank... 

[Simon]

What cannot understand is why these practices are considered worse for Kicad but OK if its against another large commercial player.

I suppose people see it as analogous to stealing money from a charity vs stealing from a bank...

sort 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 ?

[paf]

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 regards

paf

 

[alm]

So your claim is that a competitor is paying to send traffic to Farnell's website?

[Simon]

yea kicad pay for adverts on farnell, that would be the day

[Bored@Work]

So your claim is that a competitor is paying to send traffic to Farnell's website?

No, his claim is he doesn't understand how search engines work, but wants you to share his misunderstanding.

[siliconmix]

try this search string in google images "open source pcb layout" it seems to bypass a lot of crap

[EEVblog]

No, Farnell is not trying to con people.

Yes, 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-switch
If 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.

[mobbarley]

found some more keywords for them.

[Simon]

found some more keywords for them.

they should suggest batteries and chargers..... 

[Zero999]

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.

Try putting the following after the search string: -DriverDetective -Driver -Detective

That should eliminate all of those annoying hits.

[Simon]

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)

[Zero999]

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.

[Simon]

MONEY speaks louder than anything and google don't review every add you setup or have time to look into it's ethics

[Simon]

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

[metalphreak]

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 has www.website.com/KEYWORDYOUSEARCHEDWITHHERE

I 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.

[Simon]

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.

[Semantics]

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. 

[Simon]

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. 

im doing it, I did suggest that further back