I’ve read both sides of the story and think that it’s just Finesterre looking to get some cheap PR. Howies response seems reasonable to me. Before today I hadn’t heard of Finesterre, so I guess their tactic paid off.
The smartest move by Finisterre would have been to just do the Howies Adword result above and to leave it at that while contacting someone at Howies directly.
That wouldn’t have got them a dedicated thread, would it?
There seems to be a lot of storm and not a lot of teacup here. If you were to search for Maxxis and see a sponsored search result for Kenda would you care, I’d guess not all that much really.
I like the figures Howies included too, puts the aggresuve bidding aspect to bed really.