Google will pay $500 million for illegal pharmacy ads | Hacker News Reader

Google will pay $500 million for illegal pharmacy ads

reuters.com

34 pointskrelian11 comments

So wait - how come Google can be held to the fire for a half BILLION dollars, but there still has not been ANY significant arrests or even fines over the derivatives fiasco (and no significant legislation passed to stop it from happening again).

It boggles the mind.

Due to decades of deregulation it's not clear many people committed any crimes. If they did it may be incredibly hard to prove. In any event while the economy remains weak it's unlikely we'll see any major push on that front. There are however pretty specific laws against advertising illegal drugs. Didn't Google even admit they knew what they were doing was illegal?

Google are just playing it fair, but also it's more dangerous - it concerns the health of the people, rather than financial turmoil (not that the latter won't bring the former, but not direct at least).

Because when Obama takes bribes from pharma companies they ask him to let Americans die rather than be able to buy lifesaving medicine from Canada, whereas when wall street bribes Obama they're only asking to be allowed to steal trillions of dollars.

I'm no Obama fan, but... come on, dude.

Right, because I'm sure Matt Taibbi is lying about Obama getting wall street off the hook:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/obama-go...

And I'm sure that Obama did not actually make Michelle Leonhardt the DEA administrator at the request of big pharma.

Yup, I just read that one this hour.

Also see this one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/business/schneiderman-is-s...

and

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-stre...

And remember that's Rolling Stone and Matt Taibbi is also rather left leaning from what I can tell off his wikipedia entry (I'm more progressive than him and I believe Obama is making one mistake after another for reasons I cannot fathom).

That's very sad. As a consumer, if I google "cheap <drug>" and somebody outside the US is willing to sell me <drug> at a lower cost and/or with fewer bureaucratic hoops to jump through than a local provider, that is exactly what I want and expect to see featured in the Google Ads that get served up. Google was providing the public good of regulatory arbitrage - connecting willing buyers with willing sellers.

It's a shame Google had to knuckle under.

Why can't Canadian pharmacies sell drugs in the US?

Answering my own question: to protect the profits of American Big Pharma. Big Pharma gets to write the laws they want in DC.

Seems like extortion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com