From reporter Ross Cristantiello:

Before officially taking the reins as governor in January, Attorney General Maura Healey announced that her office reached a settlement with Google and iHeartMedia to resolve an investigation into a deceptive ad campaign.

Healey, the Federal Trade Commission, and five other states announced the settlements on Monday. Both Google and iHeartMedia will pay more than $1 million to Massachusetts for allegedly staging an ad campaign for the Google Pixel 4 smartphone in 2019.

Google allegedly contracted radio personalities employed by iHeartMedia to record advertisements endorsing the phone that year. The companies arranged for ad campaigns to run in various media markets around the country, including in Boston. The ads ran on certain radio stations operated by iHeartMedia and on internet streaming services.

Read more: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2022/11/28/iheartmedia-google-pixel-4-deceptive-ad-campaign-maura-healey/

Wow, a whole million dollars. That's not even remotely a penalty to Google.

So, this is about celebrities being paid to endorse a product that they don't use?

Isn't that true of literally EVERY celebrity endorsement???

It's another one of those things politicians do. Take on some bill, case, movement, whatever, that will make them look good in the headlines without actually rocking the capitalism boat.

Radio personalities aka actors always preach about products. The settlement doesn't find guilt, it says $1M is cheaper than continuing to pay the lawyers to fight it. No one believes Jennifer Aniston uses boxed hair dye. No one believes Leonardo DiCaprio actually conserves energy.

FTX proved otherwise proved otherwise. All of the celebrities involved were also investors in collapsed company.