The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the Australian Government’s consumer watchdog, is suing Google Inc, Google Australia and Google Ireland for misleading and deceptive conduct due to deceptive Adwords ads presented next to Google search results.
The ACCC alleges that sponsored links naming car dealerships appeared on Google that took users to the website of The Trading Post, a popular weekly classifieds newspaper owned by Australia’s largest telecommunications company Telstra.
The ACCC is suing on two grounds; that Google, by allowing the ads to be placed, engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in breach of section 52 of the Trade Practices Act, and that Google, by failing to adequately distinguish sponsored links from “organic” search results, has engaged and continues to engage in misleading and deceptive conduct also in breach of section 52 of the Act.
According to local media reports, Google Australia spokesperson Rob Shilkin said that Google believes the claims are without merit and will be defended vigorously.
This isn’t the first case worldwide where Google has had to defend itself against allegations such as these. So far Google has been successful in its defense against individual actions in the United States, however, this would likely be the first case where Google has been challenged at this level by a Government body. Trade practices laws in Australia are stronger than similar laws in the United States, so this isn’t a case in which Google will be assured a win.
The action will come before the Australian Federal Court in Sydney August 21.
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There is some fairly sane commentary on the matter here:
http://ash.nallawalla.com/sear.....-to-court/
I’m torn here: hate Telstra, love Google, despise car dealers.
I’d like to see how this pans out, man the ACCC have balls!
I think google must be more careful to avaoid these kind of problems in future.
Colour me unsurprised, the Australian Government are one of the largest Microsoft shills on the planet, that they use my tax dollars to go after Microsoft competitors in court rather than the convicted criminal organisation that has set back the IT industry 20 years is sad.
This is insane, no matter where your allegiances lie (ie you love/hate Google, love/hate Telstra, love/hate the Australian Government).
The ACCC are challenging Google’s core DNA - and thats the way it makes money. Sponsored links are clear - they cant be made any clearer.
The only winners in this saga will be the lawyers. Period.
The case will get tossed, maybe, just maybe Google will have to place some wimpy statement that will get buried and forgotten about, but whatever happens, the Google juggernaut will continue to pick up speed.
The ACCC suffers from relevance deprivation syndrome. This action is a load of rubbish and should never have been instigated.
It’s only total newbies that can’t tell the ads from the organic results. The ACCC aren’t very computer literate I guess.
Google DOES distinguish sponsored results from organic results (though I have to admit, I’m shocked at how many people don’t realize what the sponsored results are)
This is pretty sad. I’m guessing the ACCC is either trying to make some big bucks of Google or trying to tell them to back off.
-Chris
http://www.nerdcouncil.com
What they are doing is embarrassing us poor Aussies with their stupidity.
This could be very interesting and lets see what happens next month at the Federal Court. The ACCC doesn’t make any money out of this, its only trying to protect the Australian consumer.
Yeah, ACCC ain’t in it for the money.
Also Duncan Riley emphasized the smaller portion of ACCC’s main complaint (google not clearing identifying what are Ad’s and what are organic search results).
The main compliant by the ACCC was in fact that the trading post was effectively trading on other people’s brand names. E.g bidding on keywords such as ebay or similiar. It’s legal grey water in Australia to trade on somebody elses name like that, which is why the ACCC is doing what it’s doing.
(It would have been fine for the trading post to bid on keywords such as used cars or even cars. It’s the fact that they are bidding on keywords which are trademarked and owned by other corporations.)
And American’s shouldn’t kid themselves that this wouldn’t happen in the US, if it did it wouldn’t be the government taking action it would be the organizations themselves.
Goodluck ACCC, what the trading post did was dead annoying when looking for proper search results.
I think Google will throw every lawyer (they got left) after Viacom -
- at this …
BTW maybe the new best job at google, is lawyer not
IT
Or wont it be even better if Google redirects the Aussie Govt directly to disneyworld.com?
You don’t deserve it!
Lawyers getting a piece of Google? Who’d of thought? It takes law to make money. Google has to answer to the piper just like anyone else. They are going to get a chuck taken out of them like you wouldn’t believe.
I would love to see Google just shut down Google Australia for one month. The fallout would be huge. Vendors, advertisers, and the general population would be up in arms. After one month, the government would beg Google to come back.
Second the article in #2.
I also second #2.
I think the ACCC is making a very good point, a company should not be using a competitors name in the title of thier advertisment without fully disclosing thier position simple as that, its misleading and in Australia that is illegal.
However maybe legal action is not the best avenue, but then again maybe its the only way a company like GOOG will listen to the ACCC
William(comment 12)
true, but the fact The Trading Post (sensis/ Telstra) is also named in the action isn’t all that interesting for most TechCrunch readers, hence the focus on Google.
For the rest I agree with #2 as well. I hope Telstra suffers. Now if only the ACCC could get Telstra over the ADSL transfer scam I’d be happier again
Some of these comments are ludicrous. “Google should shut down australia”, “google should redirect them to disney”. I’m not complaining about they guys who posted that, I am trying to make a point that when an organization gets this powerful there is a legitimate need to scrutinize what they are doing. Google effectively has a monopoly on advertising right now and they are focused on generating profits, not anyone else’s interests.
I do see a problem with some of what google is doing. If it is not deceptive to have a link labeled “ABC company”, that when clicked on takes you to “XYZ company” instead then I don’t know what is. And if these are trademark keywords we’re talking about here then that’s also a problem.
Uh, come on Larry & Sergey, do no evil, remember? Or are you two just full of it sitting in the ivory towers washing your hands off the details handled by your minions?
It’s all part and parcel of the Google MO. As their search relevancy goes down, users (even experienced users) will be forced to click on the ads. In that respect, Google couldn’t care less how relevant a particular set of results are, as long as you’re getting shown relevant ads.
Australia, Germany, France, Russian, and commonwealth countries.
Google is just the advertising medium. They should be suing the advertisers themselves rather than Google. What, Google is now supposed to make sure every advertiser’s products or services are legit and live up to the ad copy?
@Mike, no one forces people to click on the ads.
I’m with Bryce on this one. The ACCC must really feel strongly about their corner to pursue this.
Google provides a clearer separation between ads and search results than any other search engine (Yahoo, Ask, MSN), so why go after Google first? (It’s a rhetorical question)
huh?
Don’t see why Google is being involved in this case, accept that it is a big company. If the ads had been placed in a normal newspaper (as happened in the past), would they still be taking the newspaper publisher to court? Trading Post is the one doing the misleading advertising, and should be held reponsible for their actions. Also the ACCC needs to consider what they are asking for in the use of trademarks as keywords. Do they want a brand company eg Nokia to be the only ones allowed to use that word in the ads - what impact would that have on all the small businesses who supply Nokia products and want to be able to advertise them.
Ugh. As much as I dislike google, they have all their ads clearly marked. It’s even annoying sometimes for people using adsense.
Google maybe successful in all their defenses, but they werent on an offense/bullying in Germany.
Google lost the battle of claiming a domain http://www.gmail.de they DO NOT own.
what comes around goes around.
on adsense for content, google makes it a point of saying that their ads need to be clearly marked on your site. if you deceive or try to confuse the reader that ads are part of your written text they will pull your account. this includes such practices as putting pictures above ad links etc.
well it’s obvious that the ads on top of the google search results ARE CONFUSING READERS with the organic search results.
I seriously doubt that Google will move all advertising to the right column to make it make the distinction between ads and search results clear.
they know where their bread is butter on…. remember do no evil:)
Hey Guys you left a rather vital fact out… the ACCC is suing “The Trading Post” the infringing advertiser. The Google part is, I would say, only a minor part of this suit.
Having said that I think it is insane that we are using government money to attempt these frivilous actions.
For those who are arguing that google has nothing to do with this, fair enough they didn’t engage in deceptive conduct themselves, but they aided, abetted and most importantly in the eyes of the law, profited from the Trading Post’s conduct.
That’s enough to get them named in the suit. They might come out of it with a slap on the wrist, but rest assured, these kind of cases don’t get summarily dismissed.
The Trade Practices Act has some real teeth to it, and for a company which is happy enough to play by the local rules to get into places like China, it’s pretty hypocritical for them to claim innocence on this one.
Agree with JT’s comment “What they are doing is embarrassing us poor Aussies with their stupidity.”
This really is rather embarrassing.
Also agree with Bill Hartzer, “Google is just the advertising medium. They should be suing the advertisers themselves rather than Google.”
There appears to be a legitimate case against Trading Post but Google sponsored links have always been clearly labelled in my experience.
If the ACCC push the point re: average users… their argument might steer towards a conclusion of ‘the average Australian user’ requiring a different standard (the ‘idiot standard’) than the rest of the world *rolling my eyes*
@Tyroga
Agree with your first point: They’re actually going after Sensis, but as Duncan said, the Google side salad adds some relevance to our international friends.
Disagree strongly on the second point: It’s basically passing off and that’s a violation of the TP act. Heaven forbid mere $10m businesses simply capitulate to the might of Telstra/Sensis. The ACCC should be congratulated for setting things straight.