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

[Julian Bajkowski]

re <Oh this is the new method of Court handling I see. 

He with Bigger Pockets gets called "Good Concise and Clear" and he with
lesser pockets gets the above.

Now where have I see this a lot lately. Oh yes - V the State of NSW.
Strangely the State nd the Judge had no problem identifying all the
issues, torts and damages in the "unintelligible, prolix ...">

It's true Justice Allsop prtefers not to suffer prolixity, but after
spending the entire morning in court that day I can appreciate the
frustration. It's odd that the ACCC, or at least it's lawyers,  can't
seem to get to the guts of the statement of claim. 

First I thought the ACCC was going after Trading Post  / Google over
whether (or not) you could use your competitor's trading name as bait
for commercial search results, ie TP (allegedly) used the name Kloster
Ford. 

It seems reasonable to ague the toss or seek regulatory boundaries that
if people clicked on the name Kloster Ford, even if it was an
advertisement, you'd expect to be taken there. There's a legitimate TPA
question about who has the rights to use a trading name; ie if I hit a
commercial link for Bobs Bongo's I don't get sent to Danny's Drums.
That's different to advertising Danny's Drums as Danny's Drums on a
search for Bob's Bongos ...  which can be annoying but not deceptive.

But that was not what the ACCC seemed to be arguing. They claimed that
the organic search results weren't sufficiently differentiated from the
commercial results/sponsored links. 

At one stage they said that a consumers view of this could  depend on
the angle of the screen / vague colours.  They took a very long time to
get where they seemed to think they wanted to go. The other point here
is that Google is the (co)respondent and the ACCC is the applicant, thus
the onus falls to the latter to make prove their case.

Bigger pockets or not, if you can't communicate your case, then you
can't really prove it.

Baj

See: 

Keep Google case simple, ACCC told


11 Sep 2007 | The Australian Financial Review | Julian Bajkowski 

The competition regulator's case against Google for misleading conduct
over sponsored internet search results made a shaky start yesterday when
the Federal Court ordered it to confine its allegations to two pages -
double spaced.

http://www.misaustralia.com/viewer.aspx?EDP://20070911000019384207&magse
ction=news-headlines-list&portal=_misnews&title=Keep+Google+case+simple%
2c+ACCC+told
<http://www.misaustralia.com/viewer.aspx?EDP://20070911000019384207&mags
ection=news-headlines-list&portal=_misnews&title=Keep+Google+case+simple
%2c+ACCC+told>
<http://www.misaustralia.com/viewer.aspx?EDP://1189411864210&magsection=
Opinion-spotlight-home&portal=_kb&title=Getting+weird+with+Google+in+cou
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