Google responded on their public policy blog. The response was very lawyerly and explained they allow any advertiser to restrict the use of their trademark in Adsense advertisements. This is an understandable argument. However, it does not override the fact that what they did was wrong. The use of the trademark was allowable under fair use as my understanding. This was not discussed by the lawyer in this post and I think for obvious reasons. They are working to squelch political speech of those who are trying to defend themselves from Moveon.org. At the same time Moveon.org can use Senator Collins’ name in advertisements all they want because she cannot trademark her name. The policy is arbitrary and they should work on these cases on a one by one basis rather than killing political debate. One person on the blog comments pointed out they are a private company that can do what they want. I agree however it’s still wrong and they need to stop being evil. I also think we concervatives can use the voice given to us via our media to fight back against the liberal bias of Google in this case.