For years when you went to Google and typed pretty much anything, the first Adwords ad on the right would be eBay touting your search term and how it's available for sale on eBay. For a while it was so dumb you could type garbage like "lkjhlkjhlkjhlkjh" and sure enough there'd be a "Find lkjhlkjhlkjhlkjh on eBay" ad on the right sidebar.

It appears that eBay and Google have moved on past that trick. But now Netflix is pulling something similar, but it's even more misleading. Just now I did a search to see if the Dylan movie "I'm Not There" was available for streaming. I typed in "netflix i'm not there" as my search term, and the first result was Netflix not surprisingly. But look what the link said: Watch I'm Not There Online - yes! Exactly what I want to do, right now!

So I clicked on the ad, er, the link, and was taken to a landing page within the Netflix site (I wasn't logged in yet). Netflix presents a nice page within the "Watch Instantly" section of the site that shows the movie poster and some info about the movie. Cool! Where's the Play Now button?

There isn't one. So I logged in, and got sent to the same page. Still no play button. In fact, the fine print says, "Title not available to stream."

Dirty trick, Netflix. Dirty trick. It's gonna cost you.

This kind of crap also reflects badly on Google. Netflix and Google: cut it out.