Europe's biggest airline is attacking Google over its 'misleading' search ads
Ryanair, Europe's biggest airline, is attacking Google for its "misleading" search ads and is calling on the search giant to enforce advertising transparency."
In a press release, Ryanair points to a search for "Ryanair," which returns an ad from what appears to be the official airline itself.
In fact, Ryanair says this ad is from an unaffiliated "screenscraper" website called eDreams, which is "masquerading" as Ryanair and "unlawfully" selling its flights.
Here's the eDreams site the search ad redirects to:
Ryanair says sites such as eDreams have caused considerable problems for its customers, including failing or refusing to pass on information to the airline and passengers regarding details such as flight time changes, check-in information, special needs assistance, and contact information, which has resulted in missed flights in some cases.
Ryanair says it has taken legal action against several screenscraper websites across Europe. The Court of Hamburg ruled in January that eDreams had been using an unlawful subdomain and was misleading customers into thinking it had an official partnership with Ryanair.
But Ryanair is demanding Google works harder to prevent these issues from occurring in the first place.