On Wednesday, the European Union accused Google of an antitrust criticism about its promoting technology, known throughout the industry as adtech.
The European Commission – the EU’s executive body – has come to the preliminary conclusion that Google “distorted competition within the ad technology industry” in Europe by “favouring its own online display technology services to the detriment of competing providers”. committee statement.
“Since no less than 2014,” the tech giant has been promoting its own ads—each how they’re bought and posted on web sites and mobile apps.
“Google has a really strong market position within the internet marketing technology sector. It collects user data, sells promoting space and acts as an internet marketing intermediary. So Google is present at just about all levels of the so-called adtech supply chain,” EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said in an announcement.
She added that Google’s alleged favoritism of its own intermediary services “has hurt Google’s competitors, but additionally the interests of publishers, while increasing advertisers’ costs.”
Google’s corporate parent Alphabet will now have the possibility to reply to the commission’s allegations in writing and will request an oral hearing to present its case to EU officials.
If Google is found guilty of violating European antitrust rules, it may very well be fined “as much as 10% of the corporate’s annual worldwide turnover”.
In accordance with statisticsGoogle’s total revenue in 2022 was $279.8 billion – 80% of which comes from digital promoting – meaning the fantastic may very well be as high as $27.9 billion.
The commission proposed “structural remedies” to deal with the antitrust concerns, which included breaking up Google’s AdTech business model in a way that complies with the bloc’s competition rules.
Dan Taylor, Google’s vp of worldwide promoting, said in an emailed statement to The Post that “the commission’s investigation focuses on a narrow aspect of our promoting business and shouldn’t be recent. We don’t agree with the opinion of the EC and can react accordingly.”
“Our ad technology tools help web sites and apps fund their content and enable businesses of all sizes to effectively reach recent customers. Google stays committed to creating value for our publishing and advertiser partners on this highly competitive sector.”
Alphabet shares fell 0.35% in premarket trading Wednesday.
The list of allegations marks one other regulatory failure for Alphabet, which has also faced major U.S. antitrust motion targeting various segments of its business empire.
In January, the Department of Justice and eight states filed a lawsuit against the search engine Alphabet for allegedly monopolizing the digital promoting market.
Since April, 17 states have joined the Justice Department’s antitrust division in a federal lawsuit accusing Google of getting a monopoly on adtech.
The lawsuit alleges that Google uses “anti-competitive, exclusionary and illegal measures to eliminate or seriously reduce any threat to its dominance over digital promoting technologies.”
The feds are also investigating the corporate’s Google Maps operations and whether it stifled competition by requiring app developers to make use of maps and search products as a part of its terms of service.
Meanwhile, in Europe, Google has already been fined thrice, value $8.6 billion since 2017.
The entire included a record fantastic of greater than $4 billion for Google’s business practices related to the Android operating system. Google continues to challenge this penalty in court.