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"Google Settles Pharmacy Ad Probe For $500 Million!

By THOMAS CATAN

WASHINGTON—In a rare public mea culpa, Google Inc. agreed to pay $500 million to avoid Justice Department prosecution on charges that it knowingly accepted illegal advertisements from Canadian online pharmacies for years.

With the long-awaited settlement Wednesday, the company said it banned advertising of prescription drugs by Canadian pharmacies in the U.S. "some time ago." However, it said that "it's obvious with hindsight that we shouldn't have allowed these ads on Google in the first place."

The U.S. government said the ads led to illegal imports of prescription drugs and could have put American consumers at risk of taking mislabled or tainted medicine.

The Justice Department said the forfeiture was one of the largest by a company in the U.S. The $500 million sum represented both the illicit revenue earned by Google from the ads and the money earned by the Canadian pharmacies from their sales to U.S. consumers.

"The Department of Justice will continue to hold accountable companies who in their bid for profits violate federal law and put at risk the health and safety of American consumers," said James Cole, deputy attorney general.

The settlement disposes of a major legal issue for Google as it faces separate antitrust investigations by the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. and regulators in Europe.

The criminal probe was one of the most serious faced by Google and had the potential to trigger uncomfortable questions about what executives knew about the alleged illicit ads, and when.

Google executives testified repeatedly before Congress in the mid-2000s that they had rigorous controls in place to prevent unlicensed online pharmacies from advertising on Google.

But in legal documents released on Wednesday, the government painted a starkly different picture, depicting a company that was willfully turning a blind eye to such efforts and, at times, even assisting them. It cited internal emails from Google employees discussing the tactics used by illicit pharmacies to circumvent its controls. Other seemed to suggest in emails that they were actively working with illicit advertisers to prevent their ads from being disqualified.

One employee wrote in a 2004 email that Google ad representatives were "furiously working" to help advertisers tweak their ads in light of a new company policy, "before approvals gets to them and disapproves." The same employee wrote earlier that "the Google team is proactively adjusting creative and optimizing" the ads of a large Canadian pharmacy.

The government said that Google was aware that it was violating U.S. law since at least 2003 and provided "customer support" to some Canadian online pharmacies until 2009 to help them reach U.S. customers.

If Google had been prosecuted by the government for knowingly endangering U.S. consumers, it could have tainted its famous credo of "Do No Evil." A criminal conviction can also disqualify a company from bidding for any government contracts.

As part of the settlement, Google accepted responsibility for improperly helping Canadian online pharmacies run ads targeted at U.S. consumers.

The settlement had been widely expected. Google said earlier this year that it was setting aside $500 million to resolve an investigation by the Justice Department, but gave few details.

The Wall Street Journal revealed the focus of the investigation in May. It also documented repeated efforts by U.S. state pharmacy regulators and independent researchers to warn Google that it was potentially facilitating illegal online activity.

As part of its investigation, the government mounted an undercover sting operation that involved setting up fake websites to advertise the unlawful sale of drugs through Google, the Justice Department said.

Since it became aware of the investigation in 2009, Google has acted to eradicate ads from illicit online pharmacies. Its policy is now to run ads only from online druggists certified by U.S. state pharmacy regulators, something it declined to do for a decade after the program was established in 1999.

Over the years, Google executives repeatedly said that unlicensed pharmacies didn't advertise on Google. In 2005, Andrew McLaughlin, then a Google executive and later a White House official, told a congressional committee that "Google has implemented a rigorous third-party review and verification process that allows only licensed pharmacies and pharmacists to display advertisements in the United States."

He echoed earlier congressional testimony in 2004 by another then-Google executive, Sheryl Sandberg.

Last September, as the investigation picked up steam, Google said a small number of rogue pharmacies had evaded those controls.

"Despite our best efforts—from extensive verification procedures, to automated keyword blocking, to changing our ads policies—a small percentage of pharma ads from these rogue companies is still appearing on Google," a company lawyer, Michael Zwibelman, wrote in a blog post.

Google isn't the only Internet search engine to have run ads from illicit online drug sellers. According to independent researchers, both Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. had a large number of such ads on their sites.

Both companies have previously said they weren't under investigation in the matter.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576528332418595052.html#i xzz1Vzc6TGDg"

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