Slashdot Mirror
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."
Ya because Americans being able to get decently priced drugs, is such a crime. My father buys drugs from a company like the ones they mention in the ads. He can't afford drugs here in the USA even though the ones he gets from Canada are exactly the same, yet cost one tenth the price.
Sounds like a good cash grab for the government.
500 million is petty chump change for the US federal government. You could define the Planck time in terms of how long 500 million dollars would keep the US government in operation.
The whole thing is stupid anyway. Good drug dealers don't deliver ads to your browser. They use networks of trust.
Like all such restrictions on what consenting adults do, these laws are a sort of IQ test -- the dumb ones get caught. The smart ones? Unless you participate you never even know they are there. This overuse of police power and regulatory authority breeds smarter dealers who are harder to catch just like what overuse of antibiotics does to staph.
Seriously some of you really think all this regulation of some things and straight up prohibition of other things is changing anything? Every day you get in your car and drive to work I guarantee you, other drivers around you are high on something, carrying something, transporting something, about to sell something. This foolishness just makes them hide it, that's all.
Not everyone can afford the alternative.
Great Intellect...