Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Australian Regulators Persist with Stupid Attack on Google

These dimwits cannot tell the difference between the search results and the advertising on a Google page! They probably think that spam is something you put in a sandwich too!

"The ACCC launched legal action against Google Australia, US-based Google Inc., Google Ireland and the Sensis subsidiary Trading Post in July, alleging misleading and deceptive conduct.

In documents filed with the court, the regulator claimed Google did not clearly distinguish between regular - "organic" - search results and ads at the top of the results page, which Google calls "Sponsored Links". Google was therefore misleading customers because it claimed to rank search results based on relevance, not the money it received from advertisers.

Google has refuted the claims, saying the wording "Sponsored Links" and the fact Google used coloured shading when presenting the links clearly indicated they were ads. The ACCC said the shading was "very subtle" and depended on the angle of the screen.....

In court last month, Justice Allsop ordered the ACCC to summarise its allegations against each of the parties in two pages, saying the existing court documents were "incomprehensible" and "somewhat repetitious". The two pages were presented to Justice Allsop today, who said they were written with "admirable clarity", despite Google's claims they were even more confusing than the original statement of claim.

Source