- Google misleading users with search and ads
- Federal Court overturns previous ruling
- Court orders Google pay ACCC's costs
Google was accused of false and misleading advertising by the ACCC / AAP Source: AAP
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GOOGLE is misleading users with false advertising in its search results, the Federal Court has ruled.
The Sydney court today ruled on appeal the search giant had failed to adequately distinguish advertisements from search results and had engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had first presented examples of search results being redirected to websites which had no affiliation with the initial search in September 2011 with the court dismissing the claim.
However, today the court overturned the earlier decision and said Google had “engaged in conduct that was misleading or deceptive or likely to mislead”.
The court found advertisements with the headline of "Harvey World Travel" or "Harvey World" that redirected to STA Travel website were in breach of section 52 of the Trade Practices Act.
An ad headlined with "Honda.com.au" that redirected to car trading website CarSales, ads headlined "Alpha Dog Training" that linked to The Dog Trainer, and ads headlined "Just 4x4s Magazine" that redirected to the Trading Post website were also in breach of the Trade Practices Act.
The justices said Google should "implement a compliance program" to stop this from happening again.
They also ordered Google to pay the ACCC's court costs.
Google said it was disappointed by the decision.
"We are disappointed by the Federal Court's decision that Google should be responsible for the content of four particular ads on its platform," a Google spokesman said.
"Google AdWords is an ads hosting platform and we believe that advertisers should be responsible for the ads they create on the AdWords platform.
"We are currently reviewing our options in light of the court's decision."
It is estimated that online search advertising in Australia through search engines such as Google is worth around $830 million per year.
