[LINK] Re: World's first, ACCC initiates Google legal proceedings

Richard Chirgwin rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au
Wed Jul 18 15:07:58 AEST 2007


Stewart (and Roger)

(An aside: I find it interesting that there are, not necessarily on-Link 
but in the wider world, a host of people who will defend Google to the 
death. What the hell, Google is a giant company and probably doesn't 
need unpaid white knights to protect its honor!)
>
> 1, Many, many Google Adwords advertisers are bidding on brands, 
> because they are popular keywords.
>
> 2, Google's automated submission process means that its publish first, 
> and fix only afterwards.
> Yahoo's vetting first process rules out the same problem there.
You could make a case that (1) and (2), taken together, would away from 
the Internet look very much like institutionalised corruption - "whoever 
gives the king the biggest bribe will have letters patent issued for a 
monopoly over the pepper trade". Google created the mechanism, 
recognises the vulnerabilities, and then says "but we did nothing wrong".
> 3, Getting action from Google is difficult because the complaints 
> process is facilitated via the US site
> and, last time I looked, specifically in terms of breaches of US law.
...whereas legal action at a high enough level seems to work wonders of 
speed from the otherwise glacial bureaucracy of Google corporate. Try 
this: search for the word "travel" on google.com.au and on google.com. 
As a result of the ACCC action, the 'sponsored links' at the top of the 
page are gone from the Australian site!  For this, we should give thanks 
to the ACCC for having removed a pestilence from the Web, even if only 
briefly. "China Democracy! Thousands of Sellers on eBay Right Now!" is 
now confined to the right-hand bar, well out of the eyeline of sensible 
people...
>
> 4, The Trading Post claims to have dumped the ad agency that was doing 
> this for them quite some time
> back so why is the ACCC picking on them. Why not choose some of the 
> many current examples?
When the story first broke I checked in on Google and Kloster Ford was 
still getting the Trading Post treatment. TP may have sacked the ad 
agency but it seemed to have left the particular Adword in place ... so 
the example was current when the action was taken.

It's also worth remembering that it takes time to frame the legal complaint!
>
> 5, This is nowhere near the first time that search engines including 
> Google have faced actions over sponsored links.
> So I wonder why the ACCC thinks it has any chance at all of having 
> sponsored links declared illegal.
I'm not sure that Google has faced that many cases in Australia. Cases 
in the US saying "this is legal" aren't relevant to the legality of the 
activity in Australia.

So the ACCC may think it has a case, based on its reading of Australian 
law and precedent.

Personally, there's an "eating itself" characteristic to Google's 
advertising activities. As a thought experiment:

"The reason the AdWords arms race exists is because declining 
effectiveness of keyword advertising makes companies spend money 
attracting very small increments of extra clicks. At some point,  a 
singularity may be considered inevitable: either a new technique will 
arise offering far greater 'bangs per buck', or advertisers will 
redirect their dollars to other marketing techniques which appear more 
effective (some of which may well be non-advertising activities). The 
outcome of the AdWords arms race in the long term is likely to be either 
a shrinkage of Google's market, or a shrinkage of the advertising market 
as a whole.

Discuss."

I'm not asserting positively that this statement is true or not - hell, 
it's a prophecy from a blind, mad Sybil, if you like - but it wouldn't 
surprise me.

RC



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