Google is hit with $1.7 BILLION fine by EU regulators for blocking advertising rivals – the tech giant’s third punishment in two years
- Google has been fined $1.68bn for abusing its role in online advertising
- EU’s competition commissioner found Google prevented companies using its AdSense product from displaying search advertisements from its competitors
- In 2018, Google was fined $5bn for anti-competitive behavior related to Android
- In 2017, fined $2.84bn in a case involving its online shopping search results
European Union regulators have hit Google with a $1.68 billion (1.49 billion euro/£1.28billion) fine for or blocking rival online search advertisers.
It is the third multi-billion dollar EU antitrust penalty for Google’s parenting company Alphabet in just two years.
The European Commission, which said the fine accounted for 1.29 percent of Google’s turnover in 2018, said in a statement that the anti-competitive practices had lasted a decade.
Google has been fined $1.68 billion (1.49 billion euro/£1,28billion) for preventing companies using its AdSense product from displaying search advertisements from its competitors
The EU’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, announced the results of the long-running probe at a news conference in Brussels on Wednesday.
‘Today’s decision is about how Google abused its dominance to stop websites using brokers other than the AdSense platform,’ Vestager said.
The commission found that Google and its parent company, Alphabet, breached EU antitrust rules by imposing restrictive clauses in contracts with websites that used AdSense, preventing Google rivals from placing their ads on these sites.
Google ‘prevented its rivals from having a chance to innovate and to compete in the market on their merits,’ Vestager said.
‘Advertisers and website owners, they had less choice and likely faced higher prices that would be passed on to consumers.’
Last year Vestager hit the company with a record $5bn (£3.8bn / €4.3bn) fine following an investigation into its Android operating system.
In 2017, she slapped Google with a $2.84bn (£2.1bn / €2.42bn) fine in a case involving its online shopping search results.
Shortly after the fine was announced, Google said it has made and will continue to make a number of changes to address EU antitrust regulators’ concerns.
‘We’ve always agreed that healthy, thriving markets are in everyone’s interest,’ Kent Walker, senior vice-president of global affairs, said in a statement.
‘We’ve already made a wide range of changes to our products to address the Commission’s concerns.
‘Over the next few months, we’ll be making further updates to give more visibility to rivals in Europe,’ he continued.
He did not comment specifically on the European Commission’s $1.7bn fine handed down today.
EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager, from Denmark, speaks at a news conference on the concurrence case with Google online search advertising, at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium on Wednesday
The European Commission opened the most recent case against Google in 2016, accusing the search engine of preventing third parties using its AdSense product from displaying search advertisements from Google’s competitors.
In response to the investigation, Google changed the conditions in its AdSense contracts with large third parties, giving them more leeway to display competing search ads.
The AdSense case may not be the end of Google’s EU antitrust woes.
EU antitrust enforcers have asked Google’s rivals if it unfairly demotes local search competitors, according to a questionnaire seen by Reuters, a move which could lead to a fourth case.
Online mapping services and others could also soon be in the spotlight.