Amul issues legal notice to Google on misuse of its platform

The Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Limited (GCMMF), which owns Amul brand, has sent a legal notice to Google India on fraudulent practices it claims to have found being carried out by individuals and organisations using the latter's platform.

The notice was issued to Google India Pvt Ltd on January 10 regarding individuals/organizations using Google platform for fraudulent practices, according to official statement on Wednesday.

Google India operates as a non-exclusive re-seller of Google LLC's AdWords program in India.

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

The statement said a series of fake business-to-business (B2B) campaigns regarding Amul Parlors, Distributors was being circulated through fake websites using Google Search ads since September 2018.

These made fake promises of 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.

"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.

It added that, "This has led Amul to issue a legal notice to Google India and goDaddy.com for holding them accountable for misuse of their platform and earning revenues through advertisements (subscription in the case of Godaddy.com) on their platform on account of innocent individuals across India".

Amul ran a promoted ad on Google Search to educate customers against such fake campaigns and had created a dedicated page about it.