As an Internet behemoth with properties that get visited a zillion times a day, life battling spammers must be pretty tough for Google. Sure, they invent new technologies to try and stop these jokers. But like parasites, they quickly adapt and come up with new methods to manipulate the system. And when it gets bad enough, it’s now clear that Google is willing to throw technology out the window and simply sue the bastards.
As they’ve announced on the Google Blog today, the search giant is taking a group of rogue pharmacies to court in order to stop them from continually bombarding Google’s ad ecosystem with their spam. As Google notes, in this case, it’s not just that the spammers are annoying users, they’re potentially tricking people and offering products that “can be dangerous without the right prescription.” So Google felt as if they had to act.
Google also notes that late last year they were forced to take other spammers to court — the so-called “Google Money” scammers. On June 1 of this year, a court granted Google a permanent injunction barring those scammers from using the Google logo or name. So while time-consuming, the court-route can work.
Says Google: “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.”