Is Google profiting from illegal ads?

Source: The Washington Post

They’re impossible to miss online: all those ads hawking cheap drugs, penny stock fortunes, low mortgage rates and instant wrinkle-zapping solutions. For consumers, it’s not always obvious which operators are legitimate.

Search companies such as Google say they work hard to make sure ads that run alongside their search results are law-biding businesses. But government investigators have raised questions about whether Google and other major search engines have profited from selling ads to illegal online companies.

Critics say consumers can be left in a lurch, while companies profit from selling ads.

Internet companies can be liable for any ads run on their sites that violate U.S. law. The Justice Department and other federal agencies are investigating Google for accepting ads from illegal online pharmacies. The company has set aside $500 million for a potential settlement of the criminal probe.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/is-google-profiting-from-illegal-ads/2011/05/18/AFXsQD7G_story.html

If they can prove knowledge aforethought, fine, otherwise they need to STFU.

I agree with ya...

1. Use an ad blocker with your web browser
2. When you intend to make a purchase, go to a legitimate market website such as Etsy, Amazon, etc., or to the known website of known purveyors that are actual companies doing actual business in the meat world as well as online. Check reviews, run a search on the selling organization if you're not sure.
3. ASSUME that ads for shit like wrinkle reduction, mortgages, penny stocks and all the other get-rich-quick, save-money-painlessly, get-attractive-instantly crap are SCAMS. Don't click on them.

Really. It's that simple. 99.9999999% of all victimization online can be avoided by using those three steps.

wearily,
Bright

Have they ever run any prostitution posing as escort ads?

How about other newspapers as well are they being investigated by the Justice Department because of illegal ads?

Thanks for the thread, alp.

I am someone affected by this. There are websites that offer up illegal downloads of sofware or help people to find these illegal downloads. Right next to links for downloads to my software (called phpLD or PHP Link Directory) are Google Ads. There is a mechanism to report this on google, but these websites keep appearing, and google keeps displaying the ads.

On a larger scale, imagine how google is helping these sites by paying them to help people get illegal downloads to software like Microsoft Office. I hate it. It seems unfair. I spoke with an attorney and it seems there is little I can do. If you have any ideas, let me know.

Will the ad that shows on the DU Homepage on my computer - the one with the picture of the HEARTBREAKING COW... ever go away for a little bit? I am on your site a bazillion times a day and I cannot ignore it (I tried). I hate seeing it... it's killing me - sooooooooooooo sad.

;(