Yesterday, the NY Times reported Google settled a case in France where Google would have to change some of their AdWords policies in France.

In short, NavX sued Google for suspending their AdWords ads. It turned out that Google thought the product they sold was illegal, but it wasn’t. So Google updated their policies for advertising for that product in France, plus agreed to give 3-month notice to some advertisers on some ads, in France-only, before canceling or suspending an ad or advertiser.

When I covered the story yesterday, the article was a bit misleading. It made it sound like Google will be changing their policies globally, but I was unsure. The NavX lawyer said “this is a monumental event, because the French competition authority got Google to modify its contractual rules on a worldwide basis.” But no, Google told me they are absolutely not changing their policies anywhere else but in France.

Google told me:

Sorry guys!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.