Nope, but it’s a pretty lame attempt at duping customers into thinking so.

Straight from the depths of black hat marketing comes this gem straight from Twitter (thanks eam0 for bringing it up).

Check out the screeenshot (this one’s mine) so it’s true.

I’ve seen some shifty moves in the past but this one really does go beyond the acceptable. I’m wondering if/how Google/Dell/Acer will react to it since it clearly violates Google’s Terms and Conditions which, for precision, I’m posting here:

7. Representations and warranties. Customer represents and warrants that (i) all of the information provided by Customer to Google is complete, correct and current; (ii) it has all necessary rights to permit and hereby grants Google and any Partners all such rights which are necessary for Google and any Partner(s) to (as applicable) use, host, cache, route, store, copy, modify, distribute, reformat, reproduce, publish, display, transmit and distribute Customer’s ad(s) (including any Targets and all Creatives) (“Use”); and (iii) such Use in accordance with this Agreement, the ads (including without limitation any Targets and Creatives) and the websites and/or landing pages linked from Customer ads (including without limitation Advertiser Services therein) shall not: (a) violate or encourage violation of any law or applicable regulation or code of practice (including without limitations the CAP Code in the UK and any equivalent advertising standards code of practice in any other jurisdiction); (b) infringe any intellectual property rights of any third party or contain any material which may be harmful, abusive, obscene, threatening or defamatory. Each party waives its rights against the other in respect of warranties and representations (whether written or oral) not expressly set out or referred to in this Agreement. Nothing in this clause limits or excludes either party’s liability for fraud.

I think you get the idea.

The point is they use this campaign uses “Acer Notebook – Offers” as the title, “Powerful Acer Notebook with Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processors.” in their body description but the destination link points to http://dell-ireland.electronicoffers.co.uk .

Apart from violating the Google’s Terms and Conditions (and let’s not go into the legality of it), how sad is that?

I think Dell is a great company (I really do) and they’re doing amazing things on the web with amazing people but come on….

Update, I was right to doubt Dell’s involvement in this. It’s an affiliate site called Tech-Offers.com owned by this guy. Not Dell at all, but someone using Acer’s success to lure people to a site under false pretenses and sell them products he makes a commission on. Sad.

UPDATE: I’ve been looking at the destination link (http://www.google.ie/aclk?sa=L&ai=CP6Pu1ReTSaOgN4On_gb7v_y2C6aZwGyE55yJB5DV9QgQASDHmPgFKAhQ4OPnugFg9QLIAQGpAr2_4QjJN7g-qgQeT9BReGpAsDzoYgIjfc8R1WXbPWd8qZ7CRc3GWNs7&num=3&sig=AGiWqtzYEKFdneSDcQQNenwsXZ5pt1UL4g&q=http://dell-ireland.electronicoffers.co.uk%3Ftracking%3DStrategy-Notebooks-6%26curlid%3D100172) and am torn between two theories:

1. It’s an affiliate link because both destination page and the destination link are different. It makes sense that only a novice dishonest person would do something as flagrantly in contrast with the TOS. Update – this is the correct theory.

2. It really is one of Dell’s marketing campaigns as the Tracking ID says “tracking=Strategy-Notebooks-6″ which is an identification code to tell them which campaign is actually working.

Either way, I’ve written to Google about it. Hopefully they’ll shed some light on the issue (or ban the user…).