Top Google Executives Approved Illegal Drug Ads

Hugh Pickens writes "PC Magazine reports that the U.S. government used convicted con artist David Whitaker, owner of an online business selling steroids and human growth hormone to U.S. consumers, to help federal agents in a sting operation against Google when he began advertising with Google with advertisements that included the statement 'no prescription needed,' clearly violating U.S. laws. Google's settlement with the U.S. government for $500 million blamed AdWords sales by Canadian pharmacies, who allegedly were selling drugs to U.S. consumers. 'We banned the advertising of prescription drugs in the U.S. by Canadian pharmacies some time ago,' Google said then. 'However, it's obvious with hindsight that we shouldn't have allowed these ads on Google in the first place.' Peter Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting, claims that chief executive Larry Page had personal knowledge of the operation, as did Sheryl Sandberg, a Google executive who now is the chief operating officer for Facebook. In 2009 Google started requiring online pharmacy advertisers to be certified by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's Verified Internet Pharmacy Practices Sites program and hired an outside company to detect pharmacy advertisers exploiting flaws in the Google's screening systems."

Comments

Once you go public...

[GodfatherofSoul]

That's when the American business school ethic takes over. No right or wrong, legal or illegal, no such thing as pride in workmanship or quality; just whatever it takes to make the books look good for the next quarter. And, if it's illegal hope you're not the sorry sucker holding the bag before you get a chance to cash out.

Re:Once you go public...

[geekoid]

Sorry, I have worked with to many public business at the C*O level. frankly, you are wrong.
is that some peoples point of view? yes. But it's not common, and it is not the 'American Business school ethic'

Did you read the article? it's form a Con-Man with no collaboration, and it reads like a classic tale that would be woven by a pathological liar.
So, long term Con-Man and liar, no confirmation, any of the alleged specifics are common knowledge, and then the feds do nothing with this information. His interaction with Google certainly doesn't sound like the typical advertiser interactions

Too Many Red Flags. Let me know when a reputable source confirms it. Until then, I'll choose to ignore the pathological liar.

Why is this against the law?

[revscat]

I should preface this by saying that I am no Google fan. I think they have made many poor decisions over the past few years, and the GPYW initiative has caused me to switch over to DuckDuckGo full time.

Having said that...

Why is it illegal for Canadian drug companies to advertise their goods in the United States? The US has insanely high drug prices, and Canadian imports of those same products are (or could be) beneficial to the lives, health, and finances of who knows how many people. This is an unjust law, and am having an incredibly difficult time finding a justification for it.

This seems like yet another instance of the pharmaceutical lobby protecting their vast profits from competition.

Re:Why is this against the law?

[causality]

The same reason it's illegal to import DVDs from Africa to sell in the US. The drug companies find they can sell drugs in the US for a LOT more than they can almost anywhere else, so they do. Allowing imports from other countries would defeat that.

You see, when they say "globalism" and "global economy" what they mean is that corporations can off-shore to get the cheapest prices available for human labor.

When humans want to do things the other way around by making an "off-shore" international purchase to get the cheapest prices available for goods, that's a crime and suddenly the government wants to enforce a brand of protectionism.

It's standard hypocrisy.

Re:500 million??

[EvilBudMan]

Have to agree. Sting? Google? They could have just told them. If the government wants to steal there money and ours, I would prefer plain old taxes. No speed traps, crazy fines in some cities that will get everyone about once a year, etc. Sometimes things get past the Mexican border too. Why should Google do their job anyhow?

I know Google has a lot of money, but a $500,000 fine is plain theft. Has the government stopped drugs coming in thru Mexico? Maybe they should be fined for that. It's all silly.

Illegal != Wrong

[tylersoze]

Yet another example highlighting the fact that "illegal" does not necessarily equate to "wrong".

How about we instead turn our rightful indignation

[melted]

How about we instead turn our rightful indignation against Big Pharma and ask why the fuck is it not legal to buy the same drugs from Canada for less? When I moved to the US, I was shocked by how badly US residents are being gouged when it comes to pharmaceuticals. Nowhere else in the world do drugs cost as much as they do in the US. In some places the same exact drugs by the same exact companies are sold at 1/5th to 1/10th the price.

Re:500 million??

[TheGratefulNet]

they were linking to it!

and if you're been breathing at all during the last few years, you know that if you LINK to things, its the same as DOING those things.

you know what I'm talking about.

Re:Sudden influx of Google is Evil Stories

[squiggleslash]

Well, maybe they are, maybe they're not, but of the three articles published in the last 24 hours by Slashdot:

1. One was an outright falsehood. (The claim Google is forcing all new sign-ups to create Google+ profiles.)
2. One was misleading, and arguably the truth was positive (spin was "Google is changing their ToS so that everyone has to share their details across all their websites!"), reality was "Google has always shared information across their websites, and the ToS is being standardized and hence made easier to understand.
3. And then there's this one, which appears to take a negative incident for Google (Google did, indeed, take ads from online pharmacies), and add some serious but unsubstantiated (and dubiously sourced) allegations to it (Billion-dollar-a-year Google's CEOs for some reason deciding, directly, to chase the million dollar market for online pharmacy ads. Does this one even make sense?)