Australia’s High Court overturned an earlier decision on Wednesday when it unanimously ruled that Google (GOOG) did not mislead consumers with its sponsored links, Reuters reported. The ruling ends a six-year legal battle between Google and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which had accused the company of engaging in misleading and deceptive advertising practices.
The five judge panel disagreed with a ruling from the Federal Court and said that because Google did not create the sponsored links, the company was not responsible for messages in them.
The court explained that “ordinary and reasonable users of the Google search engine would have understood that the representations conveyed by the sponsored links were those of the advertisers, and would not have concluded that Google adopted or endorsed the representations.”
