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Aussies Sue Over Misleading Google Ads
eldavojohn writes "Google is the target of another lawsuit — this time over whether or not they are responsible for the content that advertisers put up on their site. The case involves an instance where Google displayed ads for two automotive dealerships in Australia, yet the links led users to the site of a commercial rival. The company that placed the ads in 2005 avoided a lawsuit by settling with Australian regulators, who are now going after Google for not policing the ads. If this suit holds up it will set a precedent for very heavy ad monitoring responsibility on the part of all search engines, not just Google."
Perhaps the company placing the ads of a rival should be sued for false advertising.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
I mean, I'm not one to say "oh the poor multibillion dollar company", but this is bordering on ridiculous: Is Google really that evil or are the 5 or so lawsuits I've been hearing about in just 2 weeks against them maybe a bit much?
"This should be fun, and by fun, I mean a wholly depressing insight into the cognitive ability of some grown adults."
Only in America! Err...wait.
I am not a Google fanboi but this lawsuit is BS. Google cannot police the content of the ads. It is just a medium - akin to a billboard or a newspaper.
How many times have we seen informercials on TV and the web promising extraordinary "male enhancement"? My wife keeps pointing me to them all the time (I guess she is telling me something).
Anyways, they never work. They are all bogus but I have never been able to bring lawsuits against the TV stations or the websites.
I can sue the advertiser not the medium.
Not that it isn't a good idea for all countries to pursue, but Australia's actions don't automatically effect the rest of the world
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The Aussies are just pissed off because they didn't read the advertiser's fine print that stated "Results not typical. Not all users will experience the same gain in length or width. Some users may not notice any change at all."
UTF-8: There and Back Again
If a society is interested in remaining healthy and prosperous, groups going after innocent parties like this need to be outright censored (if private) or disbanded (if governmental) or completely overhauled with the top people fired. They are actively doing more harm than good and should be treated like the social cancers they are.
I had a similar experience recently. I was looking for a utility to restore an accidentally deleted file so I searched Google for "windows freeware undelete". The first result displayed was an AdWords listing entitled "Windows Undelete Freeware". I clicked it and looked all over the site but the company offered only paid undelete services.
I emailed the company and told them I found this misleading and they were very nice about it, saying they did not want to be accused of bait-and-switch and would contact their marketing department about this. I don't expect all companies to be so honest.
It'd be like expecting Slashdot 'editors' to actually read the linked articles before posting the stories. Where would that kind of madness end?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I believe it's making a false representation, both to the reader and to the newspaper, magazine or web hosting company.
If it's an attempt to obtain money by a false and fraudulent representation, though, then things get stickier: that's a criminal offence in Canada, and I suspect in Australia too.
American Heritage Dictionary: fraud (frôd) n.
1. A deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
'Now everyones wants to steal from of google' you say?
;)
If you're going to be a smart ass, at least be smart about it. Otherwise, well, you're just being an ass
No Comment.
"Or they just put a note that they are not responsible for it, and put it in the agreement with the advertiser that the advertiser is responsible."
Clearly they shouldn't be.
If I purchase an ad in a newspaper would the newspaper be liable if I used a competitors name? Does the newspaper have to personaly verify every address and phone number to ensure I am using only my information?
What if I visit a printing company and have scam flyers printed up. Is it up to the printing company to verify?
Just because something happens on the internet doesn't mean it's different from any other media in regards to issues like this.
sorry about the formatting:
the second part of this lawsuit states that Google's entire business model of placing advertising in the first 3 slots of any search result -yet making it so subtly seperated that most people are unaware that those results are paid for- constitutes deceptive trade practices.
lets face it folks, even if you go to google's own FAQ section on how to make more money with adsense, 100% of the methods they tell webmasters to use are basically "blend in the colors and the font so that the ads look exactly like the rest of your page. this blending makes users happy and more likely to click on your ads! we promise it's not because you're tricking them, its just because you are making your page look more elegant" BULL FUCKING SHIT.
Do you guys remember back in the late 1990s when the big moral debate at the time was whether or not search engines should start selling placement in their search results to the highest bidder? back then there was a huge uproar because people rightly said that would be deceptive. yet now, every search engine in the world DOES sell placement, because for the overwhelming majority of internet users, people simply cannot distinguish a text ad from an organic result.
there was a BBC study about 12 months ago that showed that less than 12 percent of randomly sampled internet users could "spot the ads" on a google or yahoo search. this lawsuit, besides saying it is illegal to let people trick users with trademarked keyword ads, also says that the entire PLACEMENT and SEPERATION of google's ads on their search page is deceptive.
jesus christ, just go to webmasterworld for a while and read the posts.. 99% of what they discuss is how to "blend" ads to make users more likely to be tricked into clicking on them. and the sad part? this "trick" is the entire financial basis for every web 2.0 company out there.
Google's text ads aren't a smash hit because they are "relevant", they are a smash hit because text ads look just like hyperlinks and people don't even recognize them as ads!
if your father recommends a good car dealership he's dealt with for decades, you would give that recommendation more weight than if a car salesman in a cheap flashy suit walked up to you on the sidewalk and told you he sold great cars, right?
banner ads = the cheap flashy suit salesman. text ads = you think it's just part of an unbiased website, giving you helpful advice, and you have no idea the advice was paid for.
in NY and other major cities, premium liquor manufacturers pay actors/models to go around to all the hottest clubs and conspicuously order drinks made with the manufacturer's booze, and then even tell people around them how great it tastes, etc etc.. is this really what we want the web to become?
google was making TONS of money selling ads that appeared whenever anyone typed in Louis Vuitton. There are hundreds of pirate manufacturers selling fake Louis Vuitton purses, and they were making a mint on Google.
Louis Vuitton sued Google, and Google lost. Badly.
This case is a rehash of that concept, except they have also gone a step further and claimed that Google's entire business model of displaying several paid results before the organic search results is misleading too- since they use the exact same font/size/format.. Do you think your parents or a newbie online knows that the tiny "ads by google" waaaaay over on the right hand side of the screen means that any link to the left of it for 5 inches is a paid ad?
No. They dont. People (not slashdot crowd) think that the first results are the "best" results. They have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA those are ads. None. The BBC did a study last year that showed 12 percent or less of a random sampling of web surfers could point out where the advertisements where on a typical search result page.
That folks, is why this suit is really scaring Google. Hell- even a national news story that mentioned in black and white "Hey guys, you see all this stuff on the right hand side of the screen, and on the top? Those are all paid advertisements, even though they dont look like it" could kill the whole scam.
Google has made a business model out of buying the commercial television time right after the evening's national news show, and hiring a look-alike model with a copycat set to run a second newscast, except pitching paid advertisements. Sure, a very few people might realize that it isn't the real news, but enough people will be fooled that they'll make shitloads of money.
Ad agencies like Google are going to have to address this. The law on this varies by country, but given that Google regulates the style, content, and format of ads, then charges for them, they're clearly not just a passive conduit. More significantly, Google acts as an ad agency when it places ads on the web sites of others. It determines where, when, and how often the ad runs. That's acting as an ad agency. Ad agencies are routinely held liable in false advertising lawsuits. Sites on which Google ads run probably qualify for a safe harbor, but Google, acting as an ad agency placing ads on the sites of others, does not.
It's not clear how much liability an Internet ad agency has for content, but failure to take basic steps to identify the advertiser running the ad looks like negligence.
Here's a summary of US false advertising federal law. "The FTC can pursue the advertiser, its agency, and their employees. It can fine, and enjoin, them. If the advertiser or agency is a subsidiary of another company, the FTC can go after the parent. The FTC can even impose liability for false advertising on a merged successor."
Similar principles prevail in Australian law. "The Commission does not necessarily expect (advertising) agencies to independently check the technical claims made about a product, but if they are complicit in an obviously misleading presentation, and fine print is used to obscure an offer's restrictions, then difficulties start to arise."
Wait a minute. When did they start giving copyrights for individual words? That's gonna make writing ANYTHING kinda tricky. I get a picture in my head of a lawyers version of the "Knights of Nee". Can I get the copyright for "the"?.
Who is John Galt?
Right, after all, a newspaper isn't responsible for people who place misleading classified ads. Google is an advertising carrier, not an advertiser... just like in any advertising case, you don't sue channel 6 because the car dealership put an advert out with a bait and switch photograph on it... it's the person who actually makes the ad that's the culprit. I love how nobody in the world is ACTUALLY responsible for their own actions anymore.
Speak for yourself.
"If I purchase an ad in a newspaper would the newspaper be liable if I used a competitors name?"
Actually, yes. A publisher/editor is liable for all the content that appears in the newspaper. (I'm assuming of course, that you're using the competitor's name in a way that is injurious to reputation.)
"Does the newspaper have to personaly verify every address and phone number to ensure I am using only my information?"
Most good news papers have their fact checkers doing EXACTLY that. Again, a publisher/editor is liable for all the content that appears in the newspaper.
"What if I visit a printing company and have scam flyers printed up. Is it up to the printing company to verify?"
No, because unlike the newspaper, the printing company does not -distribute- the flyers. You could print scam stuff till you're blue in the face, you are just not allowed to distribute it.
-- Brian Boyko
-- Former Associate Editor, Daily Texan Newspaper, Austin, TX.
-- M.A. Journalism, University of Texas.
I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
Whenever I bring up the BBC study showing that only 12 percent of a randomly selected population in a study 12 months ago were able to "spot the ads" when shown a search engine result page, I always get people chiming in saying "well it's obvious to me what are ads, if you can't tell the difference then that's your own fault"
Even when I say 100 times that the ads are not targeted at slashdot or computer savvy people- they are targeted at older adults with disposable income who haven't been on the web for a decade and haven't yet learned to tune the ads out.
Even when I point out that having the tiny light gray "ads by google" 7 inches to the right of a block of ads, totally unconnected, is a bit deceitful considering as you age your vision goes and most people can't even SEE the ads by google text, much less know that it applies to hyperlinks that may be nowhere near it.. Everyone says "well, thats their own fault."
Douglas Adams saw this coming... And no, the last sentence was not added by me. It's in the script---
Prosser: But the plans were on display.
Arthur Dent: On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar.
Prosser: That's the display department.
Arthur Dent: With a torch.
Prosser: The lights had probably gone.
Arthur Dent: So had the stairs.
Prosser: But you did see the notice, didn't you?
Arthur Dent: Oh, yes. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign outside the door saying "Beware of the Leopard." Ever thought of going into advertising?
I run an automotive performance tuning business, and use Google AdWords (with mixed success) to advertise. Google recently introduced a new feature where they recommend keywords to use based upon, I assume, traffic profiles with similar businesses.
Guess what some of the suggested adwords were?
You get a thousand points if you guessed "names of your competitors." Several obviously trademarked names showed up in their list.
I found this to be quite interesting in that Google was practically *inviting* me to use these trademarked names to drive clicks to my site.
Tempting? Yes...but in the end, not tempted enough to violate Google's own policies which prohibit this practice.
It did get me to wondering, though: Can I be held liable for false advertising or in violation of Google's TOS if I follow Google's keyword recommendations?
The piece of law that they are sueing under is a thing called the Trade Practices Act 1974. Section 52 is a very broad section of that act that prohibits Misleading and Deceptive conduct.
If you read the press release on the ACCC website , they are also sueing the Trading Post, which traditionally was a paper you could buy advertising items for sale. As a guess, they are looking to clean up the online advertising business to discourage behaviour that would lead to people being mislead into buying from the wrong company.
Just a bit of background for the American readers. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is part of the Australian Federal Government. They normally deal with cases of large scale misbehaviour by companies (the smaller disputes between an individual and a company normally fall to the state fair trading body). Their resposibility is to ensure that the companies are providing their products to the customers in a reasonable way. Areas they look at include, price collusion, third line forcing, misleading and deceptive advertising (includes descriptions, prices and availability), anti-competitive behaviour, product saftety, etc.
Their normal preference is to obtain a court enforceable undertaking from the company in question, that will often include, changes in behaviour, corrective advertising and recompense to the customers affected. A good example of this is the case against Repco . In that case the results was that Repco agreed to a court enforcable undertaking to:
Note there was no financial benefit from this to the ACCC, the only recpompense went to the customers affected.
In some cases, the ACCC will take an organisation all the way through the system, and ask that the result be a fine, like in the case of Safeway, where they sucessfully fined the company $8.9 Million for price fixing, and one of the staff received a fine of $50,000. From memory all of the fines are per offence, and have provisions against the employees/officers of a company to help discourage bad behaviour. As you can see to take that kind of action takes a long time (in the Safeway case, it was 10 years because it went all the way through the court system).