EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager takes another close look at Google. This time it’s about the heart of the Google business: online advertising.
The EU Commission has launched the most far-reaching competition to date for Google’s advertising business – the internet company’s money machine.
The central question is whether Google has given itself an advantage over rivals in terms of advertising services and has thereby distorted competition.
Google collects data to personalize advertising, sell advertising space and at the same time act as an intermediary in the placement of advertising, emphasized EU Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager on Tuesday in Brussels. This means that Google is involved in almost all levels of the relevant advertising business.
“We suspect that Google could have made it difficult for competing online advertising services to compete in the field of advertising technology,” said Vestager. Among other things, the competition watchdogs are investigating the question of whether Google has denied advertisers and competing advertisers access to information about user behavior that is available for its own services.
The technology giant has been the focus of the EU Commission for years. Vestager imposed fines totaling $ 8.25 billion in three cases. Among other things, it was about the smartphone operating system Android and the shopping search. Google digested the penalties with only slight dents in the balance sheet. The group also took the measures to court.
In the current proceedings, the Commission is delving deep into Google’s advertising mechanisms. It is examining, among other things, the compulsion to use the group’s own services “Google Ads” or “Display and Video 360” when placing ads on Google’s video platform YouTube. In this context, the competition authorities are investigating the suspicion that these services interact better with the AdX advertising exchange, which is also part of Google.
In addition, the Commission wants to examine Google’s plan to remove the so-called cookies from third-party providers in its Chrome web browser and instead offer a collection of software tools.
Google has already responded to the announcement: The company will continue to work constructively with the European Commission to answer their questions and to demonstrate the benefits of our products for European companies and consumers, it said. Thousands of European companies used Google’s advertising products – “because they are competitive and effective”.
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