After an 17 month wait, Justice John Nicholas of the Federal Court of Australia decided today that the ACCC did not make out their claims against Google in the case involving sponsored links and Adwords.
The key findings were that:
- ordinary and reasonable members of the relevant class of consumers are likely to understand that sponsored links are advertisements; and
- Google merely communicated the representations made by advertisers, without adopting or endorsing any of those representations
This is the matter in which one of the sponsored links was for Xbox360, which appeared when users searched for "playstation2". The court held that the publication of the sponsored link was misleading, but that Google was not involved in the contravention.
The court's reasons for decision are published at
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2011/1086.html
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