With great power, come great responsibilities and when things go wrong you have to pay big for it. This is what Google is facing now. Google is being accused of prescribing or allowing sale of drugs without permission. These accusations come from The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) as part of its response from reports by the Mississippi attorney general among other illegal transactions. Google legal director, Adam Barea, has said in a statement that more than 3 million ads have been blocked or removed from its systems which are flagged as “rogue pharmacies” since last two years.
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page inviting him to a June 18 meeting of attorneys general to address ongoing concerns about the presence of unlawful content in Google search results. The May 21 letter is one of several sent to Google by Hood and other state authorities expressing dissatisfaction with “Google’s lack of meaningful action” in dealing with unlawful content in its search results and its other services.
In should be noted that Google helped pharmacies from 2003 through 2009 in Canada ,to place online ads through its AdWords system for selling pharmaceuticals to U.S. consumers. In an FDA-backed investigation into the unlawful sale of prescription drugs online, Google began tightening its AdWords oversight.
Current complaints pertain to Google’s results which show in the organic search related queries in Auto Complete feature.Sure Google has taken lessons from $500 million settlement made over charges of allowing Canadian pharmacies to advertise illegal pharmaceutical sales without prescriptions in 2011.
Tests today, don’t redirect to ads like “oxycodone no prescription”, “no prescription needed”, “online pharmacy india”, or ads from particular brand like Walgreens, Drugstore.com or from the drug makers themselves appeared for queries like “online pharmacy no prescription”.