Technology giants Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! have agree to pay $31.5 million to settle claims that they promoted illegal gambling. However, none of the companies contested or admitted that they were guilty of such an offence, which accused them of running adverts for illegal gambling websites between 1997 and June this year. The $31.5m breaks down into $21m from Microsoft, $3m from Google and $7.5m from Yahoo!. Some of the money from the three companies will be used towards funding for the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, public service advertising and adverts warning young people about illegal gambling. Google gave the following announcement:

While we did not admit any wrongdoing, the Department of Justice has advised that online gambling is illegal in the United States and ads to promote it are improper. Google voluntarily discontinued running such ads, which were a very small part of our AdWords business, in April 2004.