Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Google Pays $500M Over Online Prescription Drug Ads

The U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday that Google has forfeited $500M over the importation of prescriptoin drugs in the United States, representing the gross revenue received from Google from Canadian pharamacies advertising to consumers in the United States, plus the gross revenue made by those Canadian pharmacies to U.S. consumers. The DOJ said that those ads, placed through Google AdWords, had resulted in the unlawful importation of controlled and non-controlled prescription drugs into the United States. Shipping of prescription drugs from pharmacies outside the United States is a crime. The DOJ said that Google had been aware of the issue since 2003, and in fact had provided customer support to those pharmacies to assist them in placing and optimizing their AdWords advertisements. Google now requires online pharmacy advertisers to be certified by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's Verified Internet Pharmacy Practices Sites program, and has retained an independent firm to detect pharmacy advertisers looking to bypass its screening.