EU fines Google $3.5B over advertising technology practices – News

The European Union today fined Google €2.95 billion, or about $3.5 billion, over its practices in the advertising technology market.

The penalty is connected to an antitrust probe that EU officials launched four years ago. The investigation focused on a set of cloud applications that Google provides for website operators and marketers. Website operators use the applications to sell ad space, while marketers rely on the software to bid for that ad space.

EU officials found that the search giant holds a dominant position in two key segments of the ad tech market. Furthermore, they determined that Google abused that dominant position to give its products an unfair edge. The latter finding led to the fine that the company received today.

Bids that marketers place for ad space through Google’s software are often processed by an online auction platform, AdX, that is likewise operated by the search giant. The company that places the highest bid wins. The EU found that Google unfairly favored AdX by not routing bids to competing ad auctions.

Officials also took issue with the way the company operates Google Ad Manager, a tool that website operators use to sell ad space. According to the EU, the tool provided Google with information on ad auction platforms that compete with AdX. The company is believed to have used that information to gain an unfair competitive advantage.

In addition to fining Google, the EU has ordered the search giant to change the business practices that were found to be anticompetitive. Furthermore, the company must “implement measures to cease its inherent conflicts of interest” in the ad tech market. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has tentatively concluded that meeting the latter requirement will require Google to sell parts of its ad tech business.

Google plans to appeal the decision. “It imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s global head of regulatory affairs, said in a statement today.

The fine also drew a reaction from U.S. President Donald Trump. “Europe today ‘hit’ another great American company, Google, with a $3.5 Billion Dollar fine, effectively taking money that would otherwise go to American Investments and Jobs,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform today. “We cannot let this happen to brilliant and unprecedented American Ingenuity and, if it does, I will be forced to start a Section 301 proceeding to nullify the unfair penalties.”

The possibility that Google may be ordered to offload parts of its business also emerged in a recently concluded U.S. antitrust trial. The case focused on the company’s flagship search engine and Chrome. The U.S. Justice Department argued that Google should be ordered to sell the browser, but the judge presiding over the trial decided this week against such a ruling.

Separately, a federal court earlier this year found that Google maintains an illegal monopoly in the ad tech market. The ruling focused on the same Google products as the EU’s newly issued antitrust decision. A remedies trial is scheduled to begin later this month. 

Image: Google