Google Inc v ACCC [2013] HCA 1 - Misleading and Deceptive Conduct and Internet Results
Wednesday 6 February 2013 @ 12.21 p.m. | Trade & Commerce
Today, the High Court of Australia handed down a decision in Google Inc v ACCC [2013] HCA 1, deeming that Google's display of both sponsored links and organic search results were not misleading and deceptive conduct due to the prominence placed on the sponsored links.
The Google search engine displays two types of search results in response to a user's search request - "organic search results" and "sponsored links". A sponsored link is a form of advertisement. Each sponsored link is created by, or at the direction of, an advertiser, who pays Google to display advertising text which directs users to a web site of the advertiser's choosing.
At first instance, the primary judge found that, although the sponsored link representations were misleading and deceptive, those representations had not been made by Google. Ordinary and reasonable members of the relevant class of consumers who might be affected by the alleged conduct would have understood that sponsored links were advertisements and would not have understood Google to have endorsed or to have been responsible in any meaningful way for the content of those advertisements.
The High Court unanimously allowed the appeal by Google stating that as Google did not create the sponsored links that it published or displayed, the ordinary and reasonable user understood that the representations conveyed by the sponsored links were those of the advertisers, and would not have concluded that Google adopted or endorsed the representations, therefore that it had not engaged in any form of misleading or deceptive conduct.
With the advent of better and better technological advances, this creates the issue of whether traditional legal methodology for misleading and deceptive conduct is still adequate to deal with this new area.
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