EU hits Google with €2.95B fine over adtech dominance

Google got slammed with a €2.95 billion ($3.45 billion) fine on Friday by European Union regulators over how it runs its advertising technology business.

The fine, one of the biggest antitrust penalties in EU history, is tied to accusations that Google has been using its size to rig the adtech market in its favor. The EU says the company’s display ad tools were built to benefit Google and nobody else.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, said Google used its control of key parts of the online ad supply chain to favor its own services.

This includes the tools that advertisers use to buy space, the platform publishers use to sell it, and the exchange in the middle. Regulators claim Google made sure those tools played nicely with each other, but not with tools from rivals.

EU orders Google to stop conflicts of interest

In a direct order, the Commission told Google to end what it called self-preferencing behavior and take real steps to remove conflicts of interest inside its ad tech business. The company now has 60 days to come up with changes that will convince regulators it’s serious.

If not, the EU says more penalties are coming. EU competition chief Teresa Ribera didn’t mince words. She said Friday that “Google abused its dominant position in adtech, harming publishers, advertisers, and consumers. This behaviour is illegal under EU antitrust rules.”

She added that Google must “come forward with a serious remedy,” warning, “if it fails to do so, we will not hesitate to impose strong remedies.”

The case is focused on display ads, the visual banners and boxes that show up across millions of websites. These ads pass through multiple layers of technology, and the EU says Google built and controlled too many of those layers.

According to the regulators, Google created a system that worked best only if companies used all its products, keeping competitors out.

Google says the ruling is wrong and will appeal

Google says the EU is completely off base. Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s global head of regulatory affairs, said Friday that the decision is “wrong” and confirmed that Google will appeal the ruling.

“It imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money,” she said. “There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before.”

The investigation started back in 2021, when the Commission first opened a case to look into whether Google’s tools gave it an unfair edge over competitors. The concern was that the company’s tools on both the buying and selling sides of the ad chain could be working together behind the scenes — cutting out other players and pushing more money into Google’s own pockets.

One major focus was how Google’s exchange, the middleman for matching ads with websites, prioritized bids from its own buying tools and gave better access to its own publisher platform. That type of setup made it harder for other ad tech companies to compete on a level playing field.

Reuters had reported earlier this week that the European Commission had delayed announcing the fine while waiting for the U.S. to reduce tariffs on European cars. According to that report, regulators held off until they saw movement on a broader EU–U.S. trade deal.

That deal, aimed at easing transatlantic tensions, appears to have cleared the way for the fine to move forward. Once that happened, the Commission moved quickly, hitting Google with the billions on Friday.

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