The international technology and search engine giant Google has faced a financial penalty in Italy for violating the country’s gambling advertising ban.
The Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Communicazioni (AGCOM) announced on October 22nd that it had imposed a fine against Google Ireland Ltd for breaching the gambling advertising ban that was unveiled in the provision of the country’s Dignity Decree. The international tech giant was said to have breached the legislation under which advertising associated with games or bets offering winnings to customers is not allowed.
The so-called Dignity Decree was unveiled by the competent authorities in the middle of 2018 and officially took effect in January 2019. Under its provisions, almost all forms of gambling advertising and sponsorship activity were suspended as part of the Italian Government’s efforts to tackle problem gambling rates in the country. Despite that, gambling companies that held operating licenses issued by the Italian authorities warned that the ban would end up in a significant increase in marketing efforts of operators that do not hold licenses in the country.
AGCOM found that Google Ireland, which oned the website promotion and indexing service Google Ads, has allowed the paid distribution of links to certain landing pages through this service.
For the time being, the Italian Authority has not provided any details regarding the size of the penalty imposed on the international tech giant, but French media revealed that Google is facing a €100,000 fine.
Google Has Not Simply Served as Advertising Materials’ Distribution Channel, AGCOM Says
As revealed by the Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Communicazioni, the tech company has spread the paid advertising messages of sublimecasino.com – a French marketing affiliate website offering gambling and betting services with cash winnings – through its own search engine www.google.com.
Furthermore, the Authority found that in this case in particular the activity that Google Ads carried out could not be classified as a hosting service, considering the fact that the characterizing element of the activity does not include “hosting” the advertising of the message, but rather its distribution through various websites on the Internet.
As explained by AGCOM, the presence of the sublimecasino.com website through paid advertising on Google meant that the search engine operator could not claim it only served as a channel for distributing the advertising materials so Italian gamblers learn about the site’s presence.
After the Dignity Decree was officially unveiled, google seemed to be taking all the necessary steps to comply with the piece of legislation’s provisions, as it started informing gambling companies that only state lotteries with deferred drawing will be able to advertise their services on the territory of Italy as of July 16th, 2018. As it was predicted at the time, gambling operators holding Italian licenses started dropping down from their positions in Google’s search results, while gambling websites that did not hold Italian licenses climbed up.
This is not the first time the international tech giant has found it hard to adapt its systems to various regulatory shifts in global markets. The company once unveiled an anti-gambling policy but it eventually started loosening the limitations. In addition, Google also started trialing paid ads for some online gambling companies that held operating licenses in a number of markets, including in certain states in the USA.
