Google will have to pay $ 500 million in fines for placing illegal online pharmacies in AdWords
Pharma, as they call the sale of medicinal (and not so) drugs on the Web, is a very profitable business. Even legal pharmaceuticals are considered to be very, very profitable business, what can we say about counterfeit Viagra and Levitra. Probably, spam messages with an offer to buy drugs at a discount of 20-30-50% did not come only to those users who simply do not have email. Naturally, all this trade is illegal in any country, but for some reason Google AdWords has the ability to publish advertisements about all these drugs.
“Pharma” was declared illegal in the early 2000s, however, many years AdWords advertised drugs that were banned in the United States (and not only the United States, but representatives of this particular country started the trial). In general, there are legal Internet pharmacies on the Web, but there are about 8% of them, according to a study that was conducted about six months ago by one Internet agency. The rest of them trade illegally, and most often, they sell illegal drugs (which, by the way, may turn out to be counterfeit).
The “farm business” threatened to turn into very big trouble for Google, including criminal prosecution, but the corporation chose to pay a huge fine (500 million, probably the largest fine in Google’s history, no?). It is worth noting that the whole case began with a lawsuit filed by the authorities regarding the advertising of Canadian drugs, legal in Canada, in the United States, where some drugs are prohibited. Then the case became overgrown with new facts and materials of the investigation, as a result of which information appeared that the Mexican “pharmacists” were also relevant to the whole case.
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In addition to the fine, the corporation has already removed errors in the algorithm for checking advertisements that allowed advertisements to be made to manufacturers of illegal medical products. I must say, a very expensive mistake turned out ...
Via reuters
“Pharma” was declared illegal in the early 2000s, however, many years AdWords advertised drugs that were banned in the United States (and not only the United States, but representatives of this particular country started the trial). In general, there are legal Internet pharmacies on the Web, but there are about 8% of them, according to a study that was conducted about six months ago by one Internet agency. The rest of them trade illegally, and most often, they sell illegal drugs (which, by the way, may turn out to be counterfeit).
The “farm business” threatened to turn into very big trouble for Google, including criminal prosecution, but the corporation chose to pay a huge fine (500 million, probably the largest fine in Google’s history, no?). It is worth noting that the whole case began with a lawsuit filed by the authorities regarding the advertising of Canadian drugs, legal in Canada, in the United States, where some drugs are prohibited. Then the case became overgrown with new facts and materials of the investigation, as a result of which information appeared that the Mexican “pharmacists” were also relevant to the whole case.
')
In addition to the fine, the corporation has already removed errors in the algorithm for checking advertisements that allowed advertisements to be made to manufacturers of illegal medical products. I must say, a very expensive mistake turned out ...
Via reuters
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/127033/
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