Google Ireland Will Not Play a Part in ACCC Lawsuit

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) have dropped allegations of misleading and deceptive conduct against Google Ireland and Google Australia. The ACCC will now only target Google USA.

The ACCC filed a case in July claiming Google Ireland and Google Australia a were misleading users by not displaying the most relevant links first as their reputation claims. The Commission says that Google do not sort the results by relevance but accept payment from sites in return for a top spot.

The ACCC also do not deem the bold writing and yellow shading used on Google’s sponsored links an adequate distinction between the sponsored links and the more relevant search results displayed underneath.

Separately, the ACCC have also filed a case against Australian online shopping site Trading Post. They say TP and Google breached the Trade Practices Act because Trading Post used the names of competing local car dealerships as false links to their website. The ACCC claim that Trading Post allegedly chose the dealership names using AdWords, A Google program used to set up hyperlinks.

Judge James Allsop asked the ACCC to submit a further statement of claim against both Google USA and Trading Post by November 8th. The Hearing will continue on the 16th of that month.