Four years after Australia' competition watchdog labelled its search results as confusing and misleading, giant internet firm Google won the nod of the court, which declared on Thursday that the company hardly violated any provisions in the country's consumer law.

In his ruling, Federal Court judge Antony Nicholas sided with Google's central argument that there were no underlying intents on the results that its search engine returns, stressing too that the 'sponsored links' displayed on its sites were nothing but plain advertisements.

The company, through its chair, Eric Schmidt, also flatly rejected accusations that appearing ads on Google search pages were deliberately manipulated to deliver more revenues to its in-house products and services.

In a Wednesday report by the Agence France Presse (AFP), Schmidt told the United States Senate that there was no way Google would 'cooked up' its search results just to favour the company's numerous internet offerings.

And it appears that the Australian court agrees with Schmidt's assertion as Nicholas thumbed down the claims lodged by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in 2007 that Google' search results were confusing and tended to promote more of its in-placed services.

While Nicholas noted that Google would have done much better using plain 'advertisement' instead of 'sponsored links', which the company did shortly after the ACCC launched its case, he stressed that the American firm did not breach any existing consumer law in Australia.

"I am not satisfied that Google contravened (trade practices laws) by failing to sufficiently distinguish advertisements from organic search results on its search results pages," Nicholas was quoted by AFP as saying on his decision.

In a statement, Google expressed relief that the protracted litigation ended on its favour as it asserted that "our guiding principle has always been that advertising should benefit both advertisers and users, and our aim is to ensure that ads are relevant and useful."

On his part, ACCC chair Rod Sims declared that while Google won the case, the whole process initiated by the his office led to important clarification of advertising measures being observed by entities in the cyber world.

Sims noted that on the merits of the agency's legal tussle against Google, the tech firm adjusted its advertising operations and implemented new rules that largely rationalised its international businesses, specifically following the probes it faced in the U.S., France and Belgium.

"This case is important in relation to clarifying advertising practices in the Internet age ... and all businesses involved in placing advertisements on search engines must take care not to mislead or deceive consumers," the ACCC chief said on his statement.