Watchdog challenges Google's 'shady' tactics

[Whitey]

This has been mentioned earlier, but some clarification of the case being brought by the Australian regulator is now available:

The hearing to decide the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's misleading conduct case against Google will commence in the Federal Court on June 23.

In court today, Justice James Allsop said he expected the hearing would take a few days and there would be little need for expert evidence or for Google to provide the ACCC with extensive documents.

The regulator claims Google does not clearly distinguish between regular, "organic" search results and ads on the same page, which Google calls "Sponsored Links".

Google was therefore misleading customers because it claimed to rank search results based on relevance, not the money it received from advertisers.

Google has refuted the claims, saying the wording "Sponsored Links" and the fact Google used coloured shading when presenting the links clearly indicated they were ads. The ACCC said the shading was "very subtle" and depended on the angle of the screen.

[smh.com.au...]

[europeforvisitors]

Maybe Google should make its ads blink or remain on the screen as popunders. That ought to eliminate any confusion.