Google: Hefty Settlement for Adwords on Illegal Drugs

Google is paying 500 million dollars, as part of an economic agreement reached with the United States Attorney’s Office: this is the outcome of a legal tug-of-war that began some years ago and is now reaching its conclusion.
It all started with the appearance on the web of Adwords ads concerning certain drugs sold in Canada, drugs that in the United States still cannot be freely purchased by anyone today but require a medical prescription.
The events date back to the period between approximately 2003 and 2009, when Google agreed to run these advertisements.
Despite protests from American authorities, this situation persisted for a long time, until a detailed complaint was filed against Google.
Today, the Mountain View company, commenting on the matter in hindsight, admits: “we should not have allowed these advertisements on Google”.
The accusation from the American authorities is indeed based on the conviction that Google knew perfectly well that the advertisements were related to an illegal activity, given that Canadian pharmacies did not request a medical prescription upon receiving orders from American citizens.
Google has therefore today agreed to pay the sum of 500 million dollars, corresponding to the amount of revenue generated for Google precisely from those particular ads, plus the estimated resulting revenue for Canadian pharmacies.