The High Court has given Google leave to appeal April's Federal Court decision in the Adwords case that held Google liable for the misleading and deceptive conduct of their advertisers. The case addresses circumstances where the advertisers concerned used the names of competitors as keywords to trigger their own ads appearing, which meant that the advertisements purported to be for a company which the account holders did not actually represent. The Federal Court held that Google was also liable for the misleading representations because in publishing the advertisement Google made a representation that the content of the sponsored link responded to the user’s keyword search.
In finding Google liable for the conduct of the advertisers, the decision obviously has much broader implications for search engine liability for the content of advertisements and the outcome of the appeal to the High Court will be key in shaping the future of online advertising protocols in Australia.
I think there will also have interesting implications for behavioural advertising (or as Google would prefer that we think of it, "internet-based advertising") on the web. After all, the case looks at a fairly clear cut fact pattern: the advertisers concerned misleadingly linked their ad to searches for competitors. However, since Google's search results are tweaked by the personalised search algorithm - and now the social networking algorithm of "Search Plus Your World", we are looking at a rich tapestry of publishers and sources of both consumer deception and risks to privacy - and a search engine which is not afraid to litigate out of liability (and responsibility) for what we are being told.
No comments:
Post a Comment