The European Commission believes Google favors its own display ad technology services. If the European Commission’s claims are true, this means Google breached antitrust rules.
What We Know:
- The Commission’s Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager announced her intentions in a tweet. The probe will investigate Google’s restrictions on accessing data about user identity and behavior; usually, Google places these limitations on advertisers, publishers, and other third parties.
.@Google collects data, sells ad space & intermediates at almost all levels of the online display advertising supply chain. We are concerned that @Google has made it harder for rivals to compete in the #AdTech market. Today, we open an investigation More: https://t.co/Mi88ecWoKh
— Margrethe Vestager (@vestager) June 22, 2021
- The Commission will also investigate complaints on Google not allowing competitors to broker ad buys on YouTube. Furthermore, Officials will examine if the corporation blocks user-tracking technologies on their platforms.
- Google quickly responded to the claims via email. A spokesperson for Google wrote that thousands of European businesses use Google’s advertising products daily for their competitiveness and effectiveness. In addition, the spokesperson declared the tech company would “engage constructively” with the European Commission to answer their questions.
- This is Google’s second investigation in one month. On June 7, CNBC reported that the French completion authority fined the tech giant €220 million, or $268 million, for abusing its market power in the ad industry. Google chose to pay the fine and also revealed it would give publishers more choice and better results when using its platforms.
- Additionally, the European Commission already found Google guilty of breaching antitrust rules in 2019. Officials determined that Google imposed restrive clauses in contracts with third-party websites. The limiting sections prevented Google’s competitors from placing search ads on these pages. As a result, the Commission made Google pay €1.49 billion, or $1.77 billion.
- The Commission does not know when it will finish its investigation on the tech titan.
Alongside Google, the European Commission also placed fines and punished other corporations such as Facebook for violating antitrust laws over the years.
