Their complaints, conveyed in a letter signed by 24 top state prosecutors, led to private meetings with Google executives earlier this year in Denver and Washington, producing contentious exchanges about the company’s practices. Now, while some of the attorneys general are pleased with Google’s response to their concerns, others want the tech giant to go further.
Google, which failed to persuade a California judge to dismiss the suits, entered settlement talks last month after attorneys for the shareholders obtained e-mails showing that top executives warned then-chief executive Eric Schmidt and co-founder Larry Page more than a decade ago about the risks of accepting such ads.
Google declined to comment on the shareholder suits. But the company said it has poured resources into trying to stamp out rogue Internet pharmacies, disabling 4.6 million pharmaceutical or health supplement ads that did not meet its standards last year. And since 2010, when it toughened its advertising policy, the number of Web ads placed by unlicensed pharmacies dropped by 99.9 percent, according to Google.
The episode has also drawn attention to Google’s ties with the White House. In a move considered unusual by legal and ethical experts, the Obama administration allowed Google to participate in a White House event on the topic while under federal investigation.
