Why Agcom has fined Google Ireland

22 October 20204 years ago babelfish

Agcom (Communications Guarantees Authority) has sanctioned Google Ireland for breach of gambling advertising rules

Agcom fine to Google Ireland Limited.

Agcom (Authority for Communications Guarantees) has sanctioned the subsidiary of Alphabet for violating the legislation on the prohibition of advertising relating to games or bets with cash winnings, or gambling.

All the details.

THE ACCUSATION

According to what was revealed by the Italian Authority, Google Ireland, owner of the Google Ads service (website indexing and promotion service), has spread, for a fee, links that direct connected users to certain sites (landing pages). This behavior is in violation of the rules that are in contrast to the gambling disorder.

“In particular, the company, through its own search engine www.google.com, has spread the paid announcement of the sublimecasino.com site which carries out gaming and betting activities with cash winnings”, reads the Agcom website .

DIRECT BET PROMOTION

Going into the details, Agcom believes that "the activity carried out by Google Ads, beyond the burden of the service rendered, cannot in any case be qualified as a hosting service, given that the characterizing element of the service does not consist" in hosting ”the advertising message, but rather in allowing it to be disseminated through various internet sites to which the message is addressed. The memorization activity is, in fact, completely ancillary and technically necessary for the provision of the main service which is instead aimed at the direct promotion of paid bets and games, an activity expressly prohibited by national law ".

SANCTION

The behavior, for Agcom, is subject, in the name of Regulation (EU) 2019/1150, to a sanction. The fine can also be imposed on indexing service providers established abroad that offer services intended for the Italian public, the Authority has sanctioned the violation.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/perche-agcom-ha-multato-google-ireland/ on Thu, 22 Oct 2020 14:53:46 +0000.