Google Sued Over Deceptive Search Results

biggles266 writes "Internet goliath Google claims to rank search results by relevance, but the search engine engages in deceptive conduct by selling off the top positions to commercial partners, a Sydney court has heard. The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) is taking world-first legal action in the Federal Court against Google Inc over allegedly deceptive conduct related to sponsored links on its websites. The ACCC has brought a two-pronged case against Trading Post and Google — including subsidiaries Google Australia and Google Ireland — for potentially misleading consumers. The consumer watchdog alleges Google does not do enough to differentiate "organic" search results — those ranked by relevance — from sponsored links which appear at the top of the results page."

Comments

popularity != relevance

[ColinPL]

Google does not do enough to differentiate "organic" search results -- those ranked by relevance

Google search results are ranked by popularity, not relevance.

Re:Really... you can't tell the difference?

[ShieldW0lf]

Does anyone here have trouble telling the difference between paid ad placements and non-paid search results on Google?

Yes. Lots of people.

Since when does a website legally have to tell you what is an isn't an ad?

Couldn't happen soon enough for me. I think advertisers should be tortured to death, personally.

Google's not perfect, but I call BS on this story

[JeremyDuffy]

Not doing a enough to differentiate their sponsored links? Of all the search engines around, they're the ones who differentiated it the most with a different font and background color. It seems strange to accuse them of this when they (at one time) were the only search engine to bother making the difference obvious. Interesting to note though... After reading this article, I checked google and there are NO sponsored links anywhere.