European Commission says it has opened an antitrust investigation into whether Google favors its own display ad tech over rivals
Brussels to examine whether US group broke rules by giving an advantage to its own services — The EU has announced a formal investigation …
Financial TimesJavier Espinoza
Context & Ripple Effects
Brussels had already sought company evidence on Google’s ad contracts and scraping practices in 2015. The formal display-ad-tech case marks a move from information gathering to a defined self-preferencing inquiry.
Google’s display advertising technology is placed under a formal European Commission antitrust inquiry focused on whether its own services receive preferential treatment.
Display-ad-tech rivals gain a regulatory process centered on the competitive position of Google’s integrated ad services.
Second-order effects
The UK CMA’s subsequent inquiry into alleged preference for Google’s ad-tech exchange services shows that scrutiny of the same conduct is not confined to Brussels, increasing the compliance burden around Google’s ad stack.
A later Commission preliminary complaint indicates that the inquiry advanced from an initial allegation to a more specific competition case against Google’s ad business.
Third-order effects
If this enforcement pattern holds, integrated platforms’ control of multiple layers of ad delivery will face sustained examination where they also operate services that compete within those layers.
The Commission’s later publisher-content AI inquiry points to a broader European focus on conflicts created when platforms use control over market infrastructure or content access to support adjacent services.
The trend: European competition enforcement is increasingly testing whether dominant platforms can operate market infrastructure while favoring their own adjacent products and services.
.@Google collects data, sells ad space & intermediates at almost all levels of the online display advertising supply chain. We are concerned that @Google has made it harder for rivals to compete in the #AdTech market. Today, we open an investigation More: https://ec.europa.eu/...
NEW: EU launches antitrust investigation into Google's ad tech practices, the latest in a long list of probes into Google's biz — 2017 Google fined $2.7 billion for shopping — 2018 Google fined $5 billion for Android — 2019 Google fine $1.7 billion for ads https://www.axios.com/.…
Just released: Google is facing an antitrust investigation from the European Commission over digital advertising practices. Apple, Amazon and Facebook are also under investigation for violating competition laws. https://ec.europa.eu/...
Google's big new antitrust case in Europe is its first in three years. The EU previously issued three antitrust decisions against Google, backed by $9 billion in fines, between 2015 and 2018. https://www.wsj.com/...?
@Google @EU_Commission Interestingly, Brussels is looking at Google's recent push to stop third-party advertisers from accessing ppl's data while still collecting that data for itself. More on that here https://www.politico.eu/...
Google has been settling some other similar cases with regulators in the U.K. and France, which looked specifically at Google's ad tech tools. The EU is also looking at whether Google's ad exchange and ad buying tools give an unfair advantage to each other.
This case is all about Google's role in the sprawling ad-tech business. “We are concerned that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete in the so-called ad tech stack,” according to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager.