Australian Govt's ACCC vs Google

[DigiVista]

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/...-15306,00.html

AUSTRALIA'S competition watchdog has hurled a grenade into the $22 billion online search marketing industry with a court action alleging that common advertising practices allowed by Google - the world's biggest search engine - are misleading and deceptive.

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Extract...

Google Australia spokesman Rob Shilkin said the action was "an attack on all search engines and the Australian businesses, large and small, who use them to connect with customers throughout the world".

"Google Australia believes that these claims are without merit and we will defend against them vigorously," he said.

[Chris_D]

I'm still a little surprised by the ACCC's actions.

injunctions restraining Google from publishing sponsored links of advertisers representing an association, sponsorship or affiliation where one does not exist

As I said in the article - how can the ACCC expect Google to know? How do you enforce this?

[mcanerin]

The crux of their argument appears to be that it's hard to tell Google Adsense from the site it's on, and it's confusing people.

That's interesting, and in the past I would have scoffed.

But there have been some recent studies that have shown that you can increase your revenue and clicks by making your AdSense ads blend in with your site to the point where newbies click on them thinking they are part of the navigation of the site. As a result just about every Made for AdSense site does this, for example.

If Google hadn't spent so much effort letting people customize their AdSense to the point where it's confusing as to where the content ends and the ads begin, this would not be an issue.

I'm not sure the ACC realizes it (they probably don't, based on the wording of the complaint, which seems to be more based on naive outrage than thoughtful and clear focus), but this is very possibly the first case against the worst aspects of Made For AdSense sites.

I normally defend Google for much of what it does, but their actions, regardless of intent, for allowing the customizing of AdSense to the point of consumer confusion has lost them my support and (much more importantly) got them sued.

Should be interesting.

Ian

[cryptblade]

Very interesting point, Ian. Couldn't Google change that quickly though? I've seen those terrible text ads with the double underlines (that also pop up when hovered over) and those are clearly marked as ads (when hovered over before any click through).

[SonnyCooL]

yah ACCC sue them is the best ....
I personal feel like cheated by google too, they allow you to custom the ad but when user click on it, they clime is fault cause the click do not generate profit to the publisher, then ur account get ban and all profit you make from the pass year is gone .....

So my word never trust google.

[AussieWebmaster]

There is also the aspect that ads are allowed to run that are scams etc. - they may eventually be brought down but the instant publishing part allows alot of things to happen

[DigiVista]

Yeah that's right - from my reading of the article, the action I think is aimed also at AdWords advertisers who use a misleading title in their ad, aimed solely at getting their competitor's prospective customers to take notice...

For example if I'm selling XYZ brand of media player and I put say "New iPod $50" as the title to attract iPod buyers.