Today or tomorrow the Department of Justice is expected to announce Google will have to pay half a billion dollars in fines for ads run on its network that sold illegal drugs. For the better part of a year, Google had been battling with online ’pharmacies’ about the products they sell.
Google had stated in official documents, due to the difficult nature of regulating ads on their network they shouldn’t be held accountable for ads they were actively removing. Google’s official statement, “… it’s obvious with hindsight that we shouldn’t have allowed these ads on Google in the first place. Given the extensive coverage this settlement has already received, we won’t be commenting further,” is clear and concise. They messed up and they know it.
