We sue the rogue pharmacists

We are trying hard to make the ads shown on Google provide our users with useful information. But sometimes we have to do something with advertising that violates our rules, for example, when we block malicious ads, or when we sue Google Money scammers . This is especially true of advertising products such as pharmacological drugs, which, without proper prescription, can be very dangerous.

Like other online services, we have struggled with this problem for years. It was a constant, sharpening cat-and-mouse game — while we and other companies were creating new rules and precautions, scamming online pharmacies always used new tactics to circumvent this protection and illegal sale of drugs online. In recent years, we have noticed that the number of such pharmacies has greatly increased, just as their methods have become more complicated. This meant that despite our efforts — from extended checks, automatic blocking of keywords, to changing our advertising rules, a small percentage of advertisements for these fraudulent pharmacies still appear on Google.

Therefore, this morning we filed a civil suit in a federal court against advertisers who, we believe, intentionally violate our rules. A trial of this kind should serve as a serious deterrent to anyone who is going to bypass our rules for the purpose of illegal advertising. We will add violators to the existing lawsuit as they are identified. Fraudulent pharmacies are evil for our users, for legitimate online pharmacies, and for the entire e-commerce industry, so we are going to continue to invest time and money to stop this malicious practice.