You ever see the episode where Wile E. Coyote took the Road Runner to court for not allowing himself to be caught. Wile E. Coyote would always change his capture methods but the Road Runner would simply adjust and be one step ahead of him.
I imagine that Google has felt rather coyote’ish in it’s fight against rogue pharmacies that sell non-prescribed medication over the internet. These drug pushers have been using Google’s very own Adwords system to target the buyers despite Google’s policy against this.
Google has decided to forgo another attempt at resolving this with technology and has instead decided to flex it’s muscles by filing a civil lawsuit in federal court. Google’s lawyers will now wear their best Wile E. Coyote suits and take their shot at the advertisers that have deliberately broken their rules.
Litigation of this kind should act as a serious deterrent to anyone thinking about circumventing our policies to advertise illegally on Google.
As we identify additional bad actors, we will add them to the lawsuit. Rogue pharmacies are bad for our users, for legitimate online pharmacies and for the entire e-commerce industry—so we are going to keep investing time and money to stop these kinds of harmful practices.
Posted by Michael Zwibelman, Litigation Counsel
This is not the first time Google took the fight to the courtroom. Last year they filed suit against “Google Money” scammers.
Google has stated that they’ll continue to identify additional “bad actors”, and add them to the lawsuit. Don’t worry Keanu, I don’t think you’re on their radar (yet).
