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

[Karl Schaffarczyk]

Hi Janet,
I think the main thrust of the case may have been missed in your posting.

The facts of the case as I understand them are:

A company with trade mark Stickybeek(tm) was running a cars for sale 
type website.
The trading post paid google for some ads, which is OK.
The trading post opted to have their ad displayed when 'Stickybeek' 
was one of the search terms, which I understand is *still* OK.
However, the trading post's ad looked something like this (my 
mock-up, not an actual ad):

Stickybeek
Look for your car online
Choose from 1000s of listings.

and what makes it *NOT* OK in this case and why the ACCC are persuing 
it, is that when a user clicked on the ad, it led the browser to the 
trading post website!

As I understand the case, no-one would have been complaining if the 
paid ad had said it was the trading post.

I think the ABC covered this case on news radio.

Regards
Karl


>
>
>I think this is interesting from a consumer perspective.
>It is interesting because the ACCC seem to be arguing from the
>perspective of the right for the brand to control the search
>outcomes(holler if I'm wrong).
>As a consumer when I search for one thing I get a range of brands
>which might be of interest because others have recognised some kind of
>probability around my searching practices. Currently this is sold by
>auction or high bid like ebay or realestate.
>
>I guess I can see that this means someone can buy the space around 
>that keyword
>but I do not see how giving the brand owner the right to control the
>information space around their product in an open search is in the
>consumer's best interests. eg if i search for stuff about sony
>rootkits or laptop batteries it is the diversity of the responses I
>get which is in my best interests.
>
>If I search for coke I get a lot of coca cola links, some links on
>coke as coal, one link on pepsi and one on cocaine. The pepsi and
>cocaine links fall under related search.
>
>If I look for pepsi i get a lot of pepsi stuff and coke as a related search.
>
>That seems pretty healthy to me.
>I don't really understand why a consumer organisation is going to
>court in order to change this unless they are going to mandate that
>consumers are able to see all the alternative products. I can't
>imagine that would be easy to do so I can only assume if the ACCC wins
>I get to see less options.
>
>It is possible I have missed something obvious but I think it is a 
>bit strange.
>
>Janet
>