A watchdog group pretended to be Russian and bought 'divisive' Google ads - now, Google is blasting the group for its ties to Oracle

Greg Sandoval/Business Insider

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks with reporters at the 2018 I/O conference.

• A watchdog group posed as a group of infamous Russian internet trolls to find out how effectively Google was at combatting foreign agents from buying "politically divisive ads."
• The group bought the ads using rubles and a Russian-based IP address and used similar language and images as were allegedly used by Russian operatives to influence the 2016 US presidential elections.
• According to the watchdog group, Google did nothing to stop them.
• Google, for its part, is blasting the watchdog group for its ties to Oracle, a major rival to the company.

A watchdog group said Tuesday that it posed as a "Russian Troll farm" and bought "politically divisive ads" on Google, and the search giant did nothing to thwart the effort - suggesting, says the watchdog group, that the search company hasn't done enough to prevent foreign agents from influencing US elections.

Campaign for Accountability ("CfA"), which identifies itself as a nonprofit, nonpartisan watchdog group that focuses on public accountability, said that it masqueraded as the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the infamous Russian "troll farm" known for spreading misinformation over the web in an attempt to influence the 2016 US presidential elections.

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The group said that it paid for the ads in rubles and used a Russia-based IP address.

"The ease with which CfA was able to replicate the 2016 Russian ad campaign shows Google has failed to keep its promise to prevent foreign actors from interfering in our elections," CfA Executive Director Daniel Stevens said in a press release.

In their respense, Google representatives noted the ties between CfA and Oracle, one of Google's business rivals. Oracle has donated money to the group.

"We've built numerous controls, technical detection systems and a detailed mapping of foreign troll accounts," Google said in a statement.

"To date, largely because of this work, the abuse from foreign entities has been limited. Now that one of our US-based competitors is actively misrepresenting itself, as part of a stunt to impersonate Russian trolls, we have taken further appropriate action to upgrade our systems and processes. We'd encourage Oracle and its astroturf groups to work together with us to prevent real instances of foreign abuse - that's how we work with other technology companies."

Since the news about IRA's 2016 campaign became public, all the big social networks are under pressure from the US government to prevent their platforms from being used by foreign agents to influence more elections.

Last October, The Washington Post reported that Google had found proof that Russian operatives spent tens of thousands of dollars on ads that appeared across many of Google's sites, including "YouTube, as well as advertising associated with Google search, Gmail, and the company's DoubleClick ad network." Google responded by placing limits on political ad targeting.

More recently, Google indicated that it had bolstered its systems to enable the company to "identify influence operations launched by foreign governments."

CfA's report comes a day before seniors leadership from Facebook and Twitter are due to appear on Capitol Hill to answer questions on a range of issues, including what they're doing to combat the spread of disinformation. As of Tuesday afternoon, Google had declined a request to send CEO Sundar Pichai, or Alphabet CEO Larry Page.

The decision not to appear alongside Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is a controversial one. Critics and rivals have blasted Google, some demanding that the company's top managers to be subpoenaed.

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