Taking advantage of competitor with AdWords

Hi there I have a sort of tricky question. I don't know whether this allowed or accepted. But my question is:

Imagine, I develop web browsers called Safari.
Is it possible to place Google Ads under the name "Internet Explorer"? So people searching on Internet Explorer will get Safari Ads along with the search results in Google.

Internet Explorer is known by many people, Safari is not.
Is it possible to take advantage of another brand and by this way attracting visitors to my (Safari) website?

Just curiousty =)
Looking forward to your input.

Yes. You can place your ad with a keyword that is the name of another product or company.
In general you will likely have a low CTR as most people who are typing in "Toys R Us" are looking for the Toys R Us website not for any toy website. But you can do it and you may snipe some customers that way.

make sure you do some research on how to write a good adwords add too. This may help you pick up some more clicks.

I think it is a good way to snipe potential customers to your own website. If you can convince them that your product is "better", I think it definitely works.

I wonder why its not used a lot.

The reason that its not used is because its not allowed. You MAY NOT use another trademark without the owners permission in Adwords. However that is changing soon.
check out this article: http://www.out-law.com/page-10025

Well that's quite an up to date source you got there.
Too bad the changes will apply in the US only and not in the Netherlands.

Yes it is U.S. I am not sure of the laws governing the European adwords market. I believe it would be stated in the current TOS for your country

From the link quoted above:

"Google has recently been liberalising its trade mark policies in relation to AdWords. Earlier this month it expanded from four to 194 the number of countries in which it would not stop AdWords advertisers from using other people's trade marks as keywords. Last year it had expanded that policy from the US and Canada to the UK and Ireland."

And

"US courts had previously drawn a distinction between the use of a trade mark as a keyword and its use in the text of an ad. Insurance company Geico lost its case against Google in 2004 when it tried to stop Google selling its trade marks as keywords."

In the US you can use 'Nike' as a keyword but NOT in your ad text. Searching 'nike' will show a number of ads.