Anand: Milk major Amul today in a note said it has filed legal notice against Google India in connection with misleading Google Search ads. Following is the note by Amul in full text:

GCMMF – Amul has issued a legal notice to Google India Pvt. India on January 10th, 2019, as they have benefited from Google Search advertising campaigns which are being misused to scam innocent individuals in the name of Amul in India.

A series of fake B2B campaigns regarding Amul Parlors, Distributors have started through fake websites using Google Search ads since September 2018.

These individuals/organizations are having malicious intent of exploiting individuals across India with 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.

These miscreants have been running paid advertisement on Google Search engine against keywords such as Amul Franchisee, Amul Parlor, and Amul Distributor among many others.

Upon opening these fake websites, individuals are required to fill forms, post which they receive calls from unknown numbers to pay registration fees ranging from Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 5 Lakhs via NEFT in various bank accounts.

Post receipt of the payment, the interest individuals stop receiving all forms of communication from these miscreants.

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

Amul submitted all legal documents pertaining to their copyright over the brand Amul and various brand names of it products. This was done under the guidance of Google India team, to prevent any miscreant from using ‘Amul’ keyword based ads on the Google Search engine.

Amul ran promoted ads on Google Search to educate customers against such fake campaign and had a dedicated page talking about it http://amul.com/m/amul-parlours-fake-websites

Amul raised the complaint with the Cyber Cell of Gujarat Police in Ahmedabad and complained to the website domain portals from where these fake website domains were being purchased.

For the last 4 months, the sales team of Amul have been meeting innocent individuals who have been duped of various hefty amounts and guiding them to file FIRs and take other legal steps. However, the most imperative step that Amul feels is to prevent the usage of platforms such as Google Search results for such nefarious activities.

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.

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.