The internet giant charges the middlemen -- known as referral agents -- as much as £200 each time someone visits their website via search page advertisements at the top of a Google page, an investigation by The Sunday Times has revealed. The referral agents advertise themselves as free advice helplines but receive as much as £20,000 commission monthly each time a new patient is referred to private rehabilitation clinics, the report said. She also reportedly called on Google, which made £59 billion from advertising in 2016, to stop selling advertisements to referral agents. However, the tech giant, in a statement on Sunday printed in the Sun, said that they have decided to “extend” the practice of banning referral agents to Britain. The referral agents are “parasites targeting sick people at the most desperate time of their lives”, said Dominic McCann, development director at the Castle Craig addiction hospital in Scotland.

Source: Hindustan Times January 07, 2018 15:11 UTC