Google Inc. has agreed to pay $500 million to settle a U.S. government investigation into the internet search leader’s distribution of online ads from Canadian pharmacies illegally selling prescription and non-prescription drugs to American consumers, a U.S. attorney in Rhode Island said Wednesday.
The settlement means the company will not face criminal prosecution for accusations that it improperly profited from ads promoting Canadian pharmacies that illegally imported drugs into the United States, U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha said.
The $500 million represents the gross revenues Google collected in ad buys from the Canadian pharmacies, plus the earnings generated from the illegal sales of drugs to American consumers, federal investigators said.
Federal officials also said Google knew as early as 2003 that its ad system was allowing Canadian pharmacies to make illegal sales. These transactions included the sale of prescription drugs without prescriptions from a licensed medical practitioner, federal prosecutors said.
Shipping prescription drugs into the U.S. from abroad violates drug and other laws, investigators said. Prescription drugs shipped into the U.S. from Canada are not subject to oversight by Canadian regulatory authorities and many sell drugs from countries with inadequate pharmacy regulations, prosecutors said.
The investigation laid bare how vulnerable the company’s automated ad system known as AdWords is to the machinations of shady operators. The ad network is a major money maker for Google and is expected to generate more than $30 billion in revenue this year.
Google acknowledged holes in its ad system in a federal lawsuit filed last fall against dozens of “rogue” online pharmacies that were finding ways to place ads for drugs despite the company’s efforts to prevent abuses.
