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

[Simon]

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 !

[mikeselectricstuff]

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.

[ejeffrey]

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.

[Simon]

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

[fax8]

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.

You  are getting it wrong. If you click on the ad link you'll be shown the buy Eagle webpage. Showing the uk.farnell.com/Kicad as 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.

[Simon]

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

[stl]

Unrelated hint:
Alt + PrtSc only captures the active window to the Clipboard

[Simon]

I propose that as a protest we google "kicad" and keep clicking on the ad, that will teach them !

[Simon]

Unrelated hint:
Alt + PrtSc only captures the active window to the Clipboard

ok nice to know, I thought of cropping it but was at work and about to leave

[Bored@Work]

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.

And 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.

[EEVblog]

You  are getting it wrong. If you click on the ad link you'll be shown the buy Eagle webpage. Showing the uk.farnell.com/Kicad as 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.

Yep, 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.

[Simon]

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 ?

[Uncle Vernon]

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!

[Simon]

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

[G7PSK]

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.

[Simon]

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.

yes 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

[harnon]

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

My 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.

[EEVblog]

yes 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

I 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.

[Simon]

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

[ChrisKiwi]

.... 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!

[ChrisKiwi]

...I was just going to check out to see if there was a newer version of KiCad to download...

http://kicad.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Page there is a new release of KiCAD, 22nd Jan

[Simon]

 

.... 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!

price 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

[amyk]

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.

On 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 a huge difference between a user manual and a schematic!!

[baljemmett]

i emailed them and pointed out that they would be in court by now if it were another company

They 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.)

[Simon]

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