Saw a article this morning about a lawsuit filed against Google for allowing Mobile advertisers to post misleading ads. A lot of it has to do with ringtones but also horoscopes and other crap.
This case has a pretty big impact if they can win a judgment.
I wonder if Google could ever be held accountable for its organic search listings?
What if SEO’s were held to the same standards as Affiliate Marketers OoOoOoOOOooOo!!!! Now that would be interesting….
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{ 65 comments… read them below or add one }
If we were held liable for our own serps then a lot of us would be doing 20 to life. My “mother beating kids with a big blue trout” posts would get me the chair indeed.
what about all those BS paid ads in Google taking every spot for ringtones. You tellin me they can’t regulate that stuff? I should start sellin some “How to cure cancer” products and see how it does.
I am still wondering if Google could ever be held accountable for its organic search listings.
Ahh poor google. they are still having a problem with their new favicon, and now these people. Hope Google can find a good favicon designer and good lawyer on forum.digitalpoint.com or somewhere.
LOL, if you actually had “how to cure cancer” products I doubt you’d have to market them on Adwords
If they were a smaller company I’m sure they could, but they’re Google, they don’t give a f***
now that can be real intresting… let’s see if they could still be held accountabel for that..
Another free promotion for Google… lol a loop hole for big G.
This looks like its for the crush offers, Shoe. M-Qube processes MobileMessenger’s US traffic and most crush traffic runs through MobileMessenger.
The same standards as affiliate marketers who promote things like getgoogleadsforfree ?
I have not seen any cases involving organic listings but there have been several related to adwords. I did see a case recently where one company sued (and won) for a competitor using trademarked terms in meta tags. Had that been done by the SEO without knowledge of risk there could be a potential case. Still not Google though, I think they have themselves pretty well covered in the CYA department.
“What if SEO’s were held to the same standards as Affiliate Marketers OoOoOoOOOooOo!!!! Now that would be interesting…”
You mean the same standards as Affiliate Marketers who promote getgoogleadsforfree?
I’m no lawyer,but I think that organic listings would not be held to the same standard because Google is the one that chooses to list & rank a site unless it deals with a trademark violation but with adwords their terms of service leaves the door open for problems if they don’t actively police them.,,, like a tv station running a cigarette advertisement
actually there is no Big G anymore. It’s a small g now. see their new icon?
Would be ultimate fun for me if google loses this case
interesting times….
Goldman goes into case history and a discussion of the relevant legal precedents. He ultimately concludes the case lacks merit and will likely fail.
It’s like suing an advertising company because their billboard diverted your attention and you crashed….. Not happening.
I don’t think Google will lose. They can hire the best lawyer in the world!
This happens when company is making extraordinary progress …
Google cannot be sued for organic search – it’s the website owner who’d be sued, we all know google SERP is all bot which updates it but adwords is human, or the SEO, could be.
they definitely have f*ck you money…
We will see how good their lawyers are for sure…
I think the time will come, very soon, when SEOs are held accountable. There are already a few lawsuits agains SEOs that screwed up customers sites. It’s like anything else now that it’s going mainstream.
So could Microsoft, but when they got too big they had some huge hurdles to face too. Microsoft clearly got hurt by those years of negative press and time dealing with lawyers.
you are right at that point.
i’m also pretty sure that google will prevail here.
Do you think that you should be accountable legally for the representations made in your ad for internet gold mining secrets?
thats right ! google itself encourages even scam ads with Adwords…
I smell settlement.
I too smell settlement but still just the feeling that both being big rivals.. Only the truth may win here
@Chetan, sorry for offtopic, how do you get your own avatar here?
uses gravatar.com
I hope they win the lawsuit makes it will weed out the crappy marketers
Shoe are you suggesting Google being sued because of sites popping up for unrelated search terms? I don’t think it would ever happen and I am obviously no lawyer, but if Shoemoney ranks on the first page when someone types in Yahoo, should Google be held accountable for the loss of money that you caused by being on the first page. Their claim could be that you are not an authority on Yahoo and you took away income. But you have posted information about Yahoo so you should rank for it. Google’s algo finds sites that have information about keywords. No, IMO Google could never be held accountable for its organic search listings.
Google will never be held accountable for its organic search listings, only the creators of the content. However, where money is changing hands (adwords) they can be held accountable.
Obviously Google has a hell of a legal team making sure the floodgates never get opened, and I think that they’ll safeguard the organic results just fine. The copyright bidding is going to be a thorn in the side though. And Viacom too, of course. .
Google will not settle if they feel they didn’t do anything wrong. By settling they would set a precedent that could hurt them and others in the future. From the summary link above I didn’t get enough information, and as Shoe knows you need all the facts when it comes to lawsuits. Lawyers those cheeky bastards!
I’d like to hear about SEO’s getting sued over messing up sites. Be good to weed out the suckers.
That’s kind of ridiculous. You don’t sue a magazine because the advertisement for X-Ray glasses was false, you sue the company that placed the ad. Simply silly.
People are always going to sue the people with the deepest pockets. It doesnt matter who is the one at fault, it matters who has the cash!
Mahalo FTW.
They are a publicly traded compnay, so at the end of they day they are held accountable for their organic shearch listings by their stock price! Google can put what every they want in their SERPs, it is their product!
Google Has Money They Will Prob just pay them off before they go to court ~Nick~
This is huge. I doubt they will win due to Google’s crack team of lawyers.
That being said, Google does approve campaigns and keywords for people. And it does have limitations in place to stop certain ads from going on…
lol seriously?
Considering how much money Google has and how many crazy lawsuits are filed in court in the US every day I’m surprised we don’t read of more against the big G..
Any carpel tunnel lawsuits filed against G yet?
~Terry
This will be great if they can do this. Google crosses too many lines and is a bit hypocritical at times… so we will see if they can get a slap on the wrist for this offense.
This opens a whole new can of worms, it will most propably culminate in a disclaimer / waiver that puts the corporate lawyers onto the opportunist’s case directly.
You can’t blame Google for all, but they need to verify every ad ASAP if anybody send some notice.
SEO’s are held to tougher standards than affiliate marketers. It’s much harder to SEO a site than to slap an ad somewhere. Affiliate marketers work by trial and error, SEO’s do the same but have to know a ton of code and be able to evaluate things Google doesn’t want you to know.
Jeremy you’re killing me with your stylesheet and javascript calls coming before the head section of your site! FIX IT! :p
They deserved it ?
I think these big companies don’t care about these kind of small lawsuits. This is their routine.
Do the CSS and Java calls make a big differance?
That’s kinda ridiculous IMO. The advertisers simply used googles system to send out the ads.. google shouldn’t be responsible. For example, a spammer uses a yahoo webmail acct for spam mailing.. is yahoo responsible? NO!
Nothing will happen for sure.
Or if google defeats, they will loose less than their per day profit.
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SERPS aren’t considered advertising though are they? So therefore it couldn’t be considered misleading advertising?
Interesting question though nonetheless.
the Big only bow for the bigger..China can dictate Google what to show and what not in their country..
Terry, you are so right, I would have expected to see so much more, and it would be great marketing or maybe not. How to get removed off Google quickly.
Well put Website Reviews, its their product so who are we to tell them how they must work. Use another product if you dont like it.
Chetan, if Google looses this case it will be a free-for-all for anyone to start sueing for anything and everything. Currently Google is seen as un-touchable.
I got into some trouble for targeting copyright terms as part of my marketing efforts, so we are already accountable. It would be hard to prove alot of it as the clients still got access to their own websites.
So Rumblepup, who is responsible the person who built the website, the client who writes the content or the SEO expert for tweating the site. Often there are too many people involved in a website for any one person to take responsibility. How do you think we will be sued.
Its free promotion for Google.
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