Google Needs An Asprin – Shareholder Sues Google

Google is an international search engine giant, a company that seems to do no wrong. Each application and development that they come up with is a huge success. Surprisingly enough, in the world of federal law and international drug transportation, Google has done quite a lot of wrong. If you never thought you would hear those words associated with the company, keep reading to find out what happened. Not only has Google been fined by the federal government for the mistake, but they are now being sued by one of their shareholders for incorrectly representing their financial gains over the years.

The problem is fairly simple, at least at its root. Google ran ads that were created by Canadian pharmacies. These online pharmacies offered to sell medications and drugs to customers in the United States. They were selling things that had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, something that is illegal under US law. The government fined Google for allowing these ads to run even though they were clearly in violation of the law. Even if the people working at Google did not realize they were breaking the law, it is their responsibility to understand what is right and what is wrong.

For this breach, Google has been fined five hundred million dollars. This is a significant fine, even by the standards of huge corporations. The government clearly wants to get the attention of Google and the pharmacies that are involved. It wants to tell people that this is not something that can be done and that it will not be ignored. They are making a statement by attacking a company that has had a very good track record in the past, at least as far as the law is concerned.

The court case that has now come about is because a shareholder, someone who bought part of Google based on the financial statements that Google put out to report its earnings, noticed that they never reported the earnings from those Canadian pharmacies. They never claimed this money since it was coming from outside of the country. This made the financial outlook different than it should have been, which was the same as lying to the stockholders.

One thing that is very interesting about this case is that the underreporting of this money did not make Google look less attractive. The shareholder who has brought the case about likely would have been even more apt to buy Google stock if it was obvious how much money Google really was bringing in. At the same time, however, that does not mean that what Google did was right. They are still obligated to tell their stockholders, as people who have given their money to make the company into what it is today, what they are making. That is how the arrangement works, and it cannot be ignored. While the stockholder may not get five hundred million dollars, odds are that Google will not be able to win this case.

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