Amul India takes Google to court for Fake Ads

One of India's biggest dairy company, Amul India is misused by Search advertising campaigns to scam innocent individuals and organisations in the name of the brand in India. Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Limited (GCMMF), which owns dairy brand Amul, has sent a legal notice to Google India for carrying out fraudulent practices using the latter's platform.

"They (Google) have benefited from Google Search advertising campaigns, which are being misused to scam innocent individuals in the name of Amul in India," GCMMF managing director RS Sodhi said.

The notice was issued to Google India Pvt Ltd on January 10 regarding individuals/organisations using the Google platform for fraudulent practices, according to an official statement on Wednesday. Google India operates as a non-exclusive re-seller of Google LLC's AdWords program in India.

"It has been observed, Google Ads platform is allowing such miscreants to use its paid promotion services repeatedly without any background checks and in the process earning revenues from the click based advertising on their page," the Amul statement said.

The statement said a series of fake business-to-business (B2B) campaigns regarding "Amul Parlors, Distributors" were being circulated through fake websites using Google Search ads since September  2018.“These miscreants have been running paid ads on Google search engines against keywords such as Amul franchisee, Amul parlour, and Amul distributor among many others.” It alleged that these individuals and organizations have “malicious intents of exploiting individuals across India with fake promises of business opportunities with Amul” only to swindle them. Google India is “accountable for misuse of their platform and earning revenues through the ads”, the notice said.

Google Ads platform is “allowing such miscreants to use its paid promotion services repeatedly without any background checks and in the process earning revenues from the click-based ads on their page”, it said. A Google India spokesperson in an email response said the company was looking into the matter.

Amul’s legal notice has explained the modus operandi of the alleged fraudsters. Once an individual - wooed by the offer to explore business opportunities with Amul, which sells packaged milk, butter, ice-cream and cheese - opens the ‘fake’ websites, he/she is required to fill a form. After that, they receive calls from unknown numbers prompting them to pay registration fees ranging from Rs 25,000 to Rs 5 lakh in various bank accounts. “Post receipt of the payment, the interested individuals stop receiving all forms of communication from these miscreants,” it said. The notice claimed that Amul had raised this issue with Google India and sought its help.

These made fake promises of a business opportunity with Amul. "Many Indians across the geography of India and age group have been robbed of their hard earned money," Sodhi asserted.

Amul stated that it had raised this issue with Google India and had sought their help to stop miscreants from using their platform through paid advertisements.