Google to pay $500m to end drug ads inquiry

By Joseph Menn in San Francisco中文

Google has reached a landmark $500m settlement with federal prosecutors to halt a criminal investigation into its acceptance of advertisements from companies selling unlicensed pharmaceuticals.

The accord is one of the largest in the history of online advertising and allows the world’s most popular search engine to avoid prosecution in a probe by the US attorney in Rhode Island, Department of Justice officials in Washington and the Food and Drug Administration.

A deal had been expected since May, after the advertising powerhouse reserved $500m for an unspecified legal matter and people involved in the talks confirmed that negotiations were underway.

Google had no immediate comment on the pact announced by Rhode Island prosecutor Peter Neronha. He said the amount represented revenue from the ads, which typically purported to be on behalf of Canadian pharmacies.

Like Microsoft and Yahoo, Google has already changed its ad policies under pressure from licensed pharmacies, major drug makers and the FDA to do more to filter out ads that tout prescription medications that are counterfeit or unlicensed for sale in the US and often manufactured in China, India and elsewhere where law enforcement is difficult to organise.

In 2008, US pharmacy regulators wrote to Google urging it to drop the firm it was using to screen out illicit pharmacies. The firm had let through several advertisers “that source their prescription drugs from various locations outside of the United States … which is contrary to US law,” according to the letter from the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy.

In addition to the intellectual property problems raised by the fakes, the FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration complained about a public health threat, because some US consumers have died from drugs bought online without a prescription.