Google will not be penalized for the Italian ad

Added: November 3, 2021

The court opted to dismiss the ruling and fines, stating that Google could not be held accountable for violations of Italy’s gambling ad restriction if the company had followed all the right procedures available to it.

Google obtained an order from Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (AGCOM), an organization that regulates advertising, on October 29, 2020. The decision said that Google had breached a “dignity regulation,” which prohibited all gambling adverts in Italy.

A Sublime Casino advertisement had surfaced in the searches, and it read as follows:

“Join the brand new Italian online casino immediately. Play over 400 games right now – Join now and register in under 30 seconds! There are no downloads. It’s safe and secure.”

Of course, the commercial advocated online gambling, but Google said it had nothing to do with it and that the advertisement was uploaded without its knowledge using deceptive tactics. According to Google, its website is automated, which implies that it cannot regulate everything that is published on it, because many firms submit advertising without Google reviewing the content. When it came to filters, Google stated that they were in effect, but the corporation employed a process known as “cloaking” by Google to “bypass” security checks in this instance.

Here is what the company said to the court:

“As soon as this behavior was noticed, Google Ireland suspended the user’s account and moved to delete the contested advertising.”

The matter was then heard by the Lazio Regional Administrative Court. Google sought that the order be deemed invalid since it had followed all procedures in this case and had not violated any rules.The court relied on prior judgments on ad hosting, which were unrelated to the gambling ad prohibition, to find that a firm must be “active, capable of providing him knowledge or control of the stored data” in order to be designated a hosting provider for ads.”

This element, according to the statement, existed:

“All the indices that… demonstrate the exclusion of the manager’s responsibility from the online platform for illicit information presented by third parties.”

As a result, in favor of Google, the court decided to dissolve the order and fines.