FAS FINES GOOGLE FOR THE DISSEMINATION OF FALSE ADVERTISING

The Antimonopoly Service issued remedies to Google LLC to stop the violation

Earlier, the Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography (Rosreestr) appealed to the service with a complaint about the dissemination of advertising of services for providing information from the Unified State Register of Immovable Property via Google AdWords.

The FAS Board found that when typing "extract from Rosreestr" in Google search, ads marked "advertising" are displayed with an offer to provide extracts from the Unified State Register of Immovable Property on a paid basis.

According to the Law on State Registration of Immovable Property, the provision of information contained in the Unified State Register of Immovable Property and provided by Rosreestr, as well as by its territorial administrations, is a public service and its provision by other persons is not provided.

Based on the results of consideration of the materials, the service recognized that the advertising of services for providing information from the Unified State Register of Immovable Property disseminated in Google violated the requirements of paragraph 1 of Article 7 of the Law on Advertising.

Google LLC, as a disseminator of advertising, violated the ban on advertising of services, the dissemination of which is prohibited by Russian legislation.

The Antimonopoly Service issued remedies to Google LLC to stop the violation. The FAS is preparing an administrative offense case. Under Article 14.3. of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation, the fine can range from 100 to 500 thousand rubles.

For reference:

According to paragraph 1 of Article 62 of the Federal Law on State Registration of Immovable Property, the information contained in the Unified State Register of Immovable Property, excluding information on which access is restricted by federal legislation, is provided by the registration authority at the request of any persons, including through the use of public information and telecommunications networks, including the Internet, including a single portal, a single system of interdepartmental electronic interaction and regional systems of interdepartmental electronic interaction connected to it, other technical means of communication, as well as by providing access to the federal state information system for maintaining the Unified State Register of Immovable Property or by other means established by the regulatory authority.

The provision of the information contained in the Unified State Register of Immovable Property is a public service. Thus according to the current legislation of the Russian Federation, the provision of such services falls within the competence of the federal state authority.

At the same time, the legislation does not provide the possibility of "resale" of public services through intermediaries, in particular, the information provided by the Rosreestr from the Unified State Register of Immovable Property.

Under paragraph 7 of Article 38 of the Federal Law on Advertising, a disseminator of advertisements is accountable for the breach of the requirements established by Article 7 of the present Federal Law.

The owner and administrator of www.google.ru and www.google.com domains, as well as websites addressed under these domain names, is Google LLC (USA). The rights to the AdWords information system (AdWords system), which is intended to place ads in the Google search, also belong to Google Inc. This system is operated by Google Inc. (USA).

The technical settings of AdWords, the procedures for filtering (moderation) of ads, the procedures for suspension and blocking of customer access to the AdWords are determined by Google LLC (USA).