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Australian Court Rules Google's Search Ads OK

Posted by samzenpus on from the and-now-a-result-from-our-sponsor dept.

daria42 writes "A long-running Australian court case debating whether Google has done enough to differentiate paid advertisements from normal organic search results has come to an end, with the search giant the victor over the country's competition regulator. The landmark case influenced how Google discloses which search results were advertisements — with the result that it now labels ads as 'Ads' rather than as 'Sponsored links.' In addition, Google now prohibits companies from advertising products or services with which they are not associated — making it much harder for competitors to artificially take valued positions in Google's rankings."

9 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Wait wait wait by gman003 · · Score: 5, Funny

    What is this? A case of the system working? A government body charged with regulating corporations doing its job competently (not being lax, but not being unreasonably strict), the corporation making reasonable and beneficial changes, and the entire thing being resolved in a civil and logical manner?

    And to make things worse, it's a relevant, timely article on Slashdot with an accurate summary and non-sensationalist headline.

    Did I miss something? Was the 2011 World Peace and Utopia Act passed without me noticing? Is it opposite day?

    1. Re:Wait wait wait by Cimexus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yep. The ACCC is one government body that is very well respected here in Australia and usually (though not always) fights the good fight. They are the reason that things like DVD region locking isn't permitted here (DVD players in Australia are sold region-unlocked, capable of playing any disc). They are the reason we have a pretty competitive mobile phone and internet industry compared to many places (lots of choice of ISPs and phone companies compared to the US). They are the reason why there are certain automatic levels of quality guarantees and warranties for all products purchased in Australia that cannot be avoided by vendors no matter what disclaimers they may choose to write in the fine print.

      TBH most Australian government bodies/public authorities, except the legislature itself, are run pretty competently and rank well by world standards of transparency/anti-corruption (though not as well as our friends across the Tasman in New Zealand - who are consistently at the very top of that list).

      It's just the politicians (legislature) themselves that seem to be the idiots, mostly (especially at the moment with our minority-government situation and petty squabbles over relatively insignificant issues). But Australians don't have the same level of mistrust of government in general that they seem to in the US (where anything run by government is assumed to be inefficient and/or corrupt by default). Because on the whole, they do a decent job and keep this country running pretty smoothly (and importantly in the current economic climate - solvently, with low sovereign debt).

    2. Re:Wait wait wait by Demonoid-Penguin · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What is this? A case of the system.

      I'm impressed by the outcome - but saddened it even occurred. You might want to have a read of the complaints, and have a chat to some of the ACCC staff who did not believe there was a case to begin with, and don't like Americans "advising" them on how to do their jobs. Telstra own Sensis - Sensis (like Telstra and Optus) continually break the law - and did again. This time using ads in Trading Post (Fairfax) to trick consumers - then tried to blame Google. Seems a few business monopolies are feeling threatened by Google, and by coincidence, an inquiry that was meant to happen a month ago was delayed till this week for some unknown reason (*cough* US Senate *cough*)

      One peppercorn does not compensate for the money that farce cost. If there's a problem with Google there's a problem with Google - no need to make shit up. That was just pathetic.

  2. Re:look out by woot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I suggest the Australian government get into the search business. There's obviously an opportunity here.

    We were, we got out:

    http://www.csiro.au/news/ps19r.html

    http://www.csiro.au/science/Panoptic.html

  3. Re:Are we really that stupid... by Hazel+Bergeron · · Score: 2

    The fact that Google is the most successful Interweb company on the planet and it achieved that by being a targeted ad broker allows us to conclude that, yes, we are really that stupid.

    In a world full of distractions increasingly hard to block out, Google's job is to effectively deliver distractions. If you can't see anything wrong with regulating that, well, welcome to society - people like to make their life less hellish and that sometimes means cooperation.

  4. Better article on another ACCC failure by Demonoid-Penguin · · Score: 2

    slashdot = stagnated

    Here

    The whole thing was pretty embarassing - the ACCC wanted to demonstrate the colour differentiated search results clearly marked Google ads, were anti-competitive. Sensis (search and ad company) is a branch of Telstra (major telecommunications carrier) who have previously been up before the ACCC - I'm sure this is just a good use of our taxdollars, not some globally orchestrated campaign against Google. Just as Microsoft really had a legitimate gripe against Google in the US (goddammit - ad prices should be set by government - unless they're Bing ads).

    The ACCC does some good - but mostly it is kicked around by scumbags looking to further their own business agenda *cough* Harvey Norman *cough*.

  5. What really started this case by powerspike · · Score: 2

    What this case really was, in google ads, you can put in a piece of text that will be replaced with the keyword the searcher searched for. What happened is a couple of ISP's advertised using this method for competitors business name, an example would be, we have telstra (biggest isp in australia), and optus, optus would of put in a advertisement using %KEYWORD%, and it would of shown their ad with the title of "Telstra internet", so it appeared it was telstra internet when in fact it was an ad for optus. That is what caused this case.

  6. Re:Advertising on a competitor's name by toetagger · · Score: 2

    There is a difference between a key word that triggers an add, and the text in the ad. It's not (and shouldn't) be admissible to use competitor's registered trade names in advertisements in order to deceive a consumer. Google provides a way to protect registered trade names in ad text. However, Google also provides a way to dynamically insert search terms into the ad text. It's this situation where a competitor's trade name was placed in an ad text by Google - and hence the lawsuit.

    Simple solution: Registered trade names (via the method Google already has) cannot be substituted dynamically into ad text. Or: If a registered trade name is in the keywords, then the option for keyword insertion is disabled for that ad group's ad texts.

  7. Re:Are we really that stupid... by Hazel+Bergeron · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Unfortunately, I don't have a degree and decades of experience in all of agriculture, construction, medicine, finance, law and science, so I sometimes need other people to do my thinking for me. I commend you and envy you slightly for having the capacity to do it all yourself.