Google found guilty of misleading advertising with Adwords

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-03/accc-wins-case-against-google/3930456

by hartror • 14 years ago

19 24 14 years ago

abc.net.au

hartror3• 14 years ago

IANAL but it appears to me that Google lost because the court has taken the position that Google does more than publish the advertisements because Google uses algorithms to match advertisements with searches. In the original ruling Google won with the position that they were like a newspaper, simply taking someone else's copy and publishing it on their site.

It is a very interesting case and I am not sure where I personally stand on it.

Either way I'm sure we will hear more from Google on the matter, they still have an avenue for appeal. They can apply to the High Court which may or may not accept to hear their appeal, I am not sure on what grounds this is decided however.

cheath2• 14 years ago

The article says, "Google's conduct involved the use by an advertiser of a competitor's name as a keyword triggering an advertisement for the advertiser with a matching headline,"

I interpret that as, the advertiser defined the competitor as the keyword and that is Google's fault for not preventing it.

Isn't that the end goal of most advertisements (overtly or not)? Tempt a captive audience away from the alternative? Clearly I'm not familiar with nuances of advertising laws (particularly abroad). Interesting article nonetheless.

hartror3• 14 years ago

Not discussed in the article but I have read elsewhere that advertisers also used the competitors name as the title of the advertisement. This is I believe the "misleading" part of of the breach of the laws.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Agreed, trying to find the actual court documents is annoyingly hard. It read like the court found issue with folks who use the search query to rewrite their headline (sort of the 'Find troll bugs on Ebay' when you search for 'troll bugs' kind of stuff)

It will be interesting to hear what Eric Goldman thinks too (he has followed all of the US trademarks vs AdWords cases which have almost universally gone in Google's favor)

DanBC• 14 years ago

(http://www.news.com.au/technology/accc-wins-appeal-against-g...)

(http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/04/03/oukin-uk-google-aus...)

> "It is Google's technology which creates that which is displayed," said the judges, who examined four cases of misleading search results.

(http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/ACCC-wins...)

> “Google's conduct cannot fairly be described as merely passing on the statements of the advertiser for what they are worth,” Chief Justice Patrick Keane and Justices Peter Jacobson and Bruce Lander said, according to the AFR. “That it happens to headline a keyword chosen by the advertiser does not make it any the less Google's response.”

(http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-03/accc-wins-case-against...)

> "Although the key words are selected by the advertiser, perhaps with input by Google, what is critical to the process is the triggering of the link by Google using its algorithms."

robryan• 14 years ago

Australia is already one of the only places in the world where Google allow companies with trademarks to block keywords matching their trademark. This result just sounds like it pushes Google further down this path which doesn't apply to any of the other major markets.

It makes like had as an affiliate or merchant where a supplier can block trademarks and make it much harder to effectively advertise your business based off their products.

pyre• 14 years ago

I wonder how fast laws would change if Google decided that Australia just wasn't worth it anymore, shuttered all Aussie operations, and blocked Australian ISPs from accessing any Google domain.

edit: Didn't see DiabloD3's comment before posting this.

DiabloD32• 14 years ago

What stops Google from just pulling out of Australia stating Australian laws are anti-free speech and unworkable for American countries, and then blacklisting all .au TLDed sites from the index?

talaketu2• 14 years ago

American countries?

rfrey• 14 years ago

DiabloD3 probably meant American companies.

That correction doesn't make the comment less inane though. I'm pretty sure that getting into a pissing match with a sovereign Western nation would be a no-win situation for Google - lose and, well, you lost; win and you've got every other government (including the U.S.) painting a target on your back.

Danieru• 14 years ago

You know, all the countries that matter, the ammerican one.

</Canadian who wanted to watch the The Daily Show's extended interviews>

DiabloD32• 14 years ago

Whoops, too late to edit now I think. I meant American companies.

Also, to those downvoting me: this isn't a troll, I am honestly asking as I am not a lawyer nor a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company.

gojomo2• 14 years ago

It might let some competitor get a foothold in Australia, which anyone who's played Risk knows is a powerful position.

Nick_C• 14 years ago

A technological reason might be that it is quite handy to have a place with similar demographics but a small user base to test stuff. For example, they might use it to see how easy/hard it is to implement country-specific rulesets.

When I worked for a national insurer, Tasmania got all the new stuff first so we could see what broke and what didn't.

jjcm• 14 years ago

I'm still confused - why is having ads linking to a competitors site illegal?

gojomo2• 14 years ago

The 'above natural' results are an amazing fountain of profit for Google driven by searchers who don't realize those are paid ads, or think that those are especially Google-endorsed. A company that is already the top natural result for its own name may still find it profitable or necessary to be the top paid result as well, to catch that traffic.

In some e-commerce contexts, even if the top natural result is the direct source of a certain product, selling at the best price, a significant amount of traffic will go to a reseller who has higher-prices, but appears in the first paid position.

For those categories, Google and the reseller are a tag-team distribution-power middleman siphoning value from both the searcher and the target site, compared to the 'platonic ideal' of just giving the searcher what they want. It's not quite 'evil', given that it subsidizes other Google benefits on less economically-valuable categories, but it's not Google being a White Knight for the searcher's best interest, either.

Google found guilty of misleading advertising with Adwords

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