ACCC vows to continue fight with Google
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has vowed to continue its ongoing legal dispute with Google after filing an appeal against a recent Federal Court decision in relation to advertisements on Google’s website.
The ACCC allege that Google has engaged in deceptive and misleading conduct by publishing a series of advertisements on search results page which comprised a business name, product name or web address of a business not affiliated with the advertiser.
“When a user clicked the words in the heading of the advertisement associated with the competitor's business or product, he or she was taken to the advertiser's website,” The ACCC said in a press release.
However, Justice Nicholas found that although a number of the advertisements were deceptive, Google had not generated the advertorial content, and had only published the content the advertiser’s content. As such, Justice Nicholas found Google blameless in the publishing of the content in question and had not breached the Trade Practices Act.
The ACCC have lodged an appeal in respect to four advertisements that the commission believes that Google is directly responsible for.
The Commission is arguing that Google’s key word insertion system, plus to the role of Google staff, made the company compliant to the deceptive advertising.
“The role of search engine providers as publishers of paid content needs to be closely examined in the online age. Specifically, it is important that they are held directly accountable for misleading or deceptive paid search results when they have been closely engaged in presenting and publishing those results.” ACCC chairman Rod Sims said.