Google pays $250 million to fight illegal ads

Google has agreed to allocate at least $250 million in the United States over the next five years to combat ads from foreign online pharmacies. That writes Phys.org, which is based on court records that have been made public.

Shareholders sued the search giant three years ago, saying that the internet giant was doing too little at the time to ban foreign online pharmacies from its ad networks. The indictment came after Google was fined half a billion dollars that same year for selling drug advertising space to Canadian online pharmacies. This was prohibited by US law.

In order to combat illegal advertisements for foreign medicines in the future, Google now says that it is now allocating fifty million dollars annually. The search giant will continue to do so for at least five years, Phys.org reports, in order to enforce the policies of its AdWords service more strictly. The company also sets up a committee that coordinates policy with regional and national legislation.