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.
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