Today I looked up an address for a watch repair shop in Google Search. Then I went to maps.google.com to get a map. Lo and behold, there is an ad for another watch repair shop below the directions.

To experiment, I changed the address to one shop before and I am seeing another ad:

I changed to a third address…again different ads based on the shop.

So if you look up the address of a shop in Google, google is going to show you an ad of a competing service (I guess one that paid Google)…Isn’t this the crux of trademark case against google? Can an address be a trademark? I would be annoyed if I owned any of these businesses…What do you think?