According to the ABC website the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) legal action against Google no longer includes the global internet company’s Australian and Irish subsidiaries.
Say what? I didn’t realise the ACCC had a problem with Google’s search results!
Going and looking at the results themselves I have to wonder what the problem is:
Do the results look “misleading”? Here’s a version highlighting the sponsored links:
I think having the sponsored links off to the right and at the top of the main results highlighted with a different background colour makes it pretty obvious they’re different. The words “Sponsored Links” helps too. So what could be the problem here? Anyone have any idea?
I think the problem is they think the sponsored links aren’t obvious enough. I can’t see them winning a court case over it or some such since they label it, but I’m pretty sure that’s their problem.
On the other hand, and like a lot of things on the internet, we’re used to it. When I was chatting with dad about this, he didn’t realise Google labeled their sponsored links so maybe it’s not as obvious as we think.