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Slightly off topic: in [2] the first screenshot showing "download chrome" query in Bing - do I understand right that the green "google.com" text is not the actual domain of the ad link?

I couldn't reproduce this, Bing no longer shows me ads annotated that way. But that seems like a strange feature to let the ad owner present custom domain name...

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You can usually pick what domain you want to show up there when you buy an ad. It's common so you can use obnoxious chains of tracking links redirecting into each other and not show up as emjcd.com

Sure (I mean that is shady but whatever) but at least it would seem logical to verify the redirect chain ends up on that domain or better yet (since the redirects could change later) only allow the domain if ownership has been verified though DNS or similar.

I simply don't see why I should be able to buy ad that shows "google.com".

That's fucking insane that it's allowed.

But if the ability to override the domain is truly that important, then there needs to be manual vetting of the ad buyer and the target domain. I'm sure you could automate it with signed TXT records, but I think there should still be a human in the chain to at least double-check everything.

>That is shady but whatever

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