Google and the ACCC will take their fight over in-search advertising to the High Court after the search giant today won the right to have the appeal heard.
Google sought special leave to appeal the Federal Court’s recent decision that found the company guilty of deceptive conduct via its AdWords product. The Federal Court found that by redirecting users through mislabelled sponsored search results Google was guilty of deceptive conduct. A sponsored link that was labelled “Harvey World Travel” but redirected to STA Travel was used as an example.
Google took the fight to the High Court today and won the right to have the case heard some time in the next 12 months.
Google’s understandably happy about it, too:
“We are pleased with the High Court’s decision to grant our special leave for appeal. Google AdWords is an ad hosting platform, and we believe that advertisers should be responsible for the ads they create on the AdWords platform.
One of the great aspects of Google AdWords is that it’s an open platform that enables small and large businesses to quickly create, manage and adjust their campaigns themselves in response to current trends and business needs. Its flexible, self-serve model is critical in empowering businesses to reach customers and grow their businesses in the rapidly moving digital economy.
We investigate complaints about violations of our policies and terms and conditions, and if we are notified of an ad violating our terms and conditions or policies we will remove it.”