Google sued by Australian regulator over sponsored links

12 Jul 2007

Sydney: The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) today announced having launched an unprecedented court action against leading internet search engine Google for misleading web users by misidentifying sponsored links on its search engine.

The ACCC, Australia''s consumer watchdog, said it wanted Google to stop publishing search results that fail to distinguish between paid advertisements and search results.

The ACCC said the case arose in 2005 when Google''s search engine listed two car dealerships from the New South Wales city of Newcastle as sponsored links, which are paid for by companies.

However, the links fed through to the website of a rival to the dealerships, the classifieds magazine Trading Post, which competes with them for automotive sales.

The ACCC said that it was seeking declarations from the federal court that Google and Trading Post had breached trade practices legislation, as well as injunctions preventing Google from publishing results that did not distinguish Google Inc, Google Ireland Limited and Google Australia Pvt Ltd as defendants in the action, along with the Trading Post magazine.