It looks more and more like Google wants to convert native search hits to paid clicks...
Notice how often when you search for "company" you find the company's ad first and then below the native search result...
Notice how often when you search for "company" you find the company's ad first and then below the native search result...
I'm guessing clicking the ad costs the company money per click, and the native search result doesn't? If I'm explicitly searching for a company, and I'd prefer that they don't have to incur an advertising penalty on my behalf, I'd need to scroll past the first result to the second.
Therefore, ads for a company that appear when the company name is clicked are considered highly relevant and useful, and therefore have a very high quality score and therefore very low price.
It's one of those "the sky is blue" type of things in advertising. You NEVER want a competitor to have a shot at advertising to your potential customers, especially when they've gone to the point where they're typing in your name into Google so their conversion rate is likely significantly larger than your average site visitor.
Google has become a bloodsucker on the economy. You and I are the ones paying in higher goods and services costs passed on to us. Worse, the bidding has no natural upper bound.