In a move that Google claims will go with its policy on trademark use in ad text with industry standards, the search giant Thursday changed its advertising policy, allowing advertisers the use of trademarks related to other companies in their ads, in specific circumstances.

The announced change marks a reverse turn from Google earlier policy of prohibiting anyone, other than the trademark owners, from using a trademark in the text of an ad. It also implies bigger expenses for online ads mentioning trademarked terms!

Talking about the turnaround in its stand, Google said: "We believe that this change will help both our users and advertisers by reducing the number of overly generic ads that appear across our networks in the US."

Google also said that the use of trademarks will be limited to three kinds of companies - resellers, component sellers, and information providers.

In the opinion of Eric Goldman, associate professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, Google's new policy - of doing away with the company's earlier blocking of ad copy reference by resellers - closely matches the ad policies of Yahoo and Microsoft.

Dave Kelly, who is a trademark lawyer with Finnegan and has tracked issues with Google and trademarks for years, said that the new policy is better than the previous one, and would hopefully result in lesser number of misleading ads.