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The European Union has announced a formal investigation into Google’s advertising business to determine whether it is harming competition by restricting or excluding competitors’ data and services.
Google’s advertising revenue last year was approximately US$147 billion, occupying a dominant market position, operating a leading advertising trading tool, and the largest online advertising market.
“Google exists at almost every level of the online display advertising supply chain,” said Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s executive vice president for competition policy.
“We are worried that Google will make it more difficult for competitors’ online advertising services to compete in the so-called ad technology stack.”
in particular, Probe will See how Google insists that advertisers can only use their own tools to buy display ads on YouTube.
Investigators also want to know whether Google’s tools are beneficial to the company’s advertising trading platform and trading market, and whether competitors’ services can access data on user responses to advertisements traded on Google’s trading platform.
Vestag added that Brussels will investigate Google’s policy on tracking users “to ensure they are in line with fair competition.”
The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, stated that it will consider “the need to protect user privacy” in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation. It added: “Competition law and data protection law must go hand in hand to ensure that the display advertising market operates in a level playing field, and all market participants protect user privacy in the same way.”
The investigation was conducted at a time when regulators in Europe and elsewhere were taking the risk of conducting investigations that looked at the intersection between privacy and competition issues.
For example, last year the French competition authority launched an investigation into Apple’s update of its privacy standards. Regulators did not force the company to postpone the implementation of these changes.
The EU’s investigation of Google was conducted a few days after France Impose a fine of 220 million euros on the company Abusing its dominant position in the advertising field. Contrary to Google’s three ongoing appeals against the European Union in court, Google said it would not appeal and agreed to make some changes globally.
Google said: “We will continue to engage constructively with the European Commission, answer their questions, and show the benefits of our products to European companies and consumers.”
The investigation comes at a time when Brussels is debating draft legislation to tame the power of large technology companies. The rules that are expected to be promulgated in the first half of 2022 will include laws requiring technology companies to share data with competitors to promote competition.
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