India’s largest dairy player, Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), the company we better know as Amul, has slapped Google India Pvt Ltd and goDaddy.com with a legal notice for faking B2B campaigns on their platforms.
As per Amul, both Google India and goDaddy.com were held accountable for misuse of their platform for earning revenues through advertisements in case of Google and subscriptions in case of goDaddy on their respective platforms for fake campaigns that duped individuals seeking Amul franchise across India.
Communication From The Brand
“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 a paid advertisement on Google Search engine against keywords such as Amul Franchisee, Amul Parlor, and Amul Distributor among many others,” the dairy player said in official communication.
The Real Issue
These fake websites made people fill forms, after which they received fake calls asking to pay a registration fee ranging from Rs 25,000 to Rs 5 lakhs via NEFT into various accounts. Post receipt of the money, the individuals did not receive any communication from these fake representatives of Amul.
Amul has provided Google with all legal documents pertaining to their copyright over Amul and the various brand names under Amul.
“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 stated.
The Course of Action
A complaint with the Cyber Cell of Gujarat Police in Ahmedabad and complaint to the website domain portals from where these fake website domains were being purchased along with email inquiry to Google have been initiated by Amul.
Although Amul flagged this issue with Google quite some time ago, the legal notice was sent across on 10th of January 2019.
“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 use 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,” Amul further stated.
