Google is said to sell part of the advertising business
Google gets problems with the EU again. After European data protection authorities had already prevented the US group from launching its AI chatbot Bard in the EU this week, there are now problems with Google’s advertising business.
After Opinion of the EU Commission Google has held a dominant position in online advertising “since at least 2014”. The focus is on the so-called adtech industry. This includes software solutions that help create advertising and marketing campaigns.
“The company collects user data, sells advertising space and acts as an intermediary for online advertising,” said EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager loudly agency reports. This mixed situation means that Google not only holds a dominant market position, but also has an information advantage over the competition.
Vestager emphasized that dominance alone is not problematic, but the EU investigation shows that Google has preferred its own services in this system in order to increase its revenues.
The EU Commission is therefore demanding that Google have to sell part of its advertising business. The Authority is aware that this requirement is serious. “Of course I know this is a strong claim, but it reflects the nature of markets and how they work,” Vestager said.
Unsurprisingly, Google assesses the situation differently. “We disagree with the Commission’s view and will react accordingly,” the US company said in a statement. Google remains committed to “creating value for its publisher and advertising partners in this highly competitive industry.”
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The US company also faces high penalties. These can be in the range of up to ten percent of Google’s worldwide annual turnover if the EU Commission should find that EU law has been broken. If it should come to that, Google could take legal action against it – and thus delay any payments. Last year, Google managed to reduce a penalty.
How serious the EU is about this concern is also made clear by the fact that it is threatening a large tech company with the splitting up of one of its sub-businesses for the first time. So far, the means that the EU Commission used in this area was “only” the imposition of fines.
Google has already felt this: the EU has already imposed three antitrust fines amounting to several billion euros on the US group in recent years.
