TORONTO?no dateline? (AP) — European Union regulators on Friday hit Google with a 2.95 billion euro ($3.5 billion) fine for breaching the bloc’s competition rules by favoring its own digital advertising services, marking the fourth such antitrust penalty for the company.
The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, also ordered the U.S. tech giant to end its “self-preferencing practices” and take steps to stop “conflicts of interest” along the advertising technology supply chain.
It’s the fourth time that the Commission has hit Google with a multibillion-euro fine in an antitrust case. It's a move that is likely to anger U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration has lashed out at the European Union over digital regulations it has imposed on Big Tech companies.
The Commission said its investigation found that Google “abused its power” by favoring its own online display advertising technology services to the detriment of competitors, online advertisers and publishers.
The company has 60 days to come up with proposed remedies.
If it doesn't come up with “a viable plan, the Commission will not hesitate to impose an appropriate remedy," Teresa Ribera, the European Commission’s executive vice-president overseeing competition affairs, said in a statement posted online.
“At this stage, it appears that the only way for Google to end its conflict of interest effectively is with a structural remedy, such as selling some part of its Adtech business," Ribera said.
But the Commission said it first wants to "hear and assess" the company's proposal.
Google said the decision was “wrong” and vowed to appeal.
“It imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s global head of regulatory affairs, said in a statement.
Ribera said that Google's “illegal practices” resulted in advertisers facing higher marketing costs that they likely passed on to European consumers through higher prices for products and services. At the same time, it also meant lower revenue for publishers, like news sites, which might have resulted in lower quality and higher subscription costs for consumers.
The decision was overdue, coming more than two years after the European Commission announced antitrust charges against Google. It also comes amid renewed tensions between Brussels and Washington over trade, tariffs and technology regulation.
The commission had said in 2023 that the only way to satisfy antitrust concerns about Google’s lucrative digital ad business was to sell off parts of its business.
Top EU officials have previously said that the commission was seeking a forced sale because past cases that ended with fines and requirements for Google to stop anti-competitive practices have not worked, allowing the company to continue its behavior in a different form.
The commission’s penalty follows a formal investigation into online display advertising that it opened in June 2021, which found that since 2014, Google “abused” its dominant position in the ad-technology ecosystem, the commission said.
Online display ads are banners and text that appear on websites and are personalized based on an internet user’s browsing history.
Mulholland said, “There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before.”
Cori Crider, a senior fellow at the Future of Technology Institute think tank, said, “Europe made an important stand for the rule of law today by pressing ahead with this first-step fine in the face of Trump and Big Tech’s bullying."
But “only a break-up will fix Google’s monopoly,” said Crider, who's also an honorary professor at UCL Laws. “If Europe’s enforcers flinch on a break-up in the end, Google will rightly chalk a fine up as a win.”
While the EU's fine is a huge sum, it's pocket change for Google, which earned $28.2 billion in revenue in the second quarter.
Google is also facing pressure on the other side of the Atlantic over its ad-tech business.
In a separate U.S. case, the Justice Department asked a federal judge in May to force the company to sell off its AdX business and DFP ad platform — tools that are also at the heart of the EU case. They connect advertisers with publishers who have ad space to sell on their sites. The case is scheduled to move to the penalty phase, known as remedy hearings, in late September.
Authorities in Canada and Britain are also targeting the company over its digital ad business.
Google has already avoided a breakup earlier this week in the U.S., where it's under fire on a separate front after a U.S. federal judge found it had an illegal monopoly in online search. On Tuesday, the judge ordered a shake-up of its search engine but rebuffed the government's attempt to force a sale of its Chrome browser.
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