Google must start taking responsibility for the adverts that it profits from

Google is under ever greater pressure to stop publishing adverts for financial scams but it has little incentive to act until new laws force it to do so.

The company has been warned that as many as 90 per cent of ads it is displaying for ISA and bond-related search terms are questionable.

It would be an alarming statistic at any time, but a year on from the London Capital and Finance scandal it is particularly shocking.

LCF took in £236m of investors’ money, with the majority of people handing over their savings after seeing adverts at the top of Google search results.

What then happened to that money remains the subject of an investigation, but what we do know is that investors have lost the majority of their money while Google collected £20m from LCF’s marketing company Surge Financial.

It is also clear that Google still carries out almost no checks on adverts, or the people creating them, before putting them online.

This leaves customers open to a broad range of potential harm, including losing their life savings. It’s not just ISAs, investments, pensions and bonds where Google’s approach is lacking.

Recently it was revealed that sites advertising online casinos were using Google to target gamblers seeking help with their addiction. Again, Google took its fee for the advertising but does not have to take responsibility for it.

Sites promoting fake insurance can also be found in abundance in the paid-for results at the top of a Google search.

All of these issues and more stem from Google’s contention that it is a platform not a publisher. It claims that it cannot be held liable for content that others produce; the search engine is mereley a conduit.

This has always been a contentious position it now looks to be untenable.

Google hoovered up $113bn of advertising revenue last year. It is the dominant player in the online ad market.

If a local newspaper can be held accountable for adverts it publishes, how can one of the biggest companies in the world not be held to the same standard?