Google is likely to face a relatively modest EU antitrust fine in the coming weeks over the alleged abuse of its dominant position in advertising technology, Reuters reported.
The fine is reportedly likely to be on a lower scale than the record 4.3 billion euro (£3.7bn) penalty the European Commission imposed on Google in 2018 for using its sway in mobile operating systems to crush competition.
A lower fine could signal a change in the approach of current EU competition commissioner Teresa Ribera, compared to her predecessor Margrethe Vestager, who handed out record penalties to large tech companies as a deterrent.
Remedies
Ribera is more focused on ending anti-competitive practices than punishing them, the report said.
She will reportedly not seek to force Google to break up its adtech business by selling off units, unlike Vestager who suggested the sale of DoubleClick for Publishers or the AdX ad exchange as a remedy.
The unnamed people cited in the report said Ribera may not have to issue a break-up order to remedy Google’s ad practices, as the company is already heading into a September trial date on remedies after a US federal judge in April ruled its adtech business an illegal monopoly.
The Commission carried out a four-year investigation into Google, based on a complaint by the European Publishers Council, that led to charges in 2023 that Google allegedly favours its own advertising services over rivals, in contravention of competition laws.
Other fines the EU has imposed on Google include a 2.42bn penalty in 2017 for using its price-comparison shopping service to unfairly compete with European rivals and a 1.49bn euro fine in 2019 for unfairly pushing websites to use its AdSense advertising platform.
In June 2023, the Commission issued an official ‘Statement of Objections’ over Google’s alleged abusive practices in online advertising technology, saying it had preliminarily found that a behavioural remedy was likely to be ineffective to prevent the risk, and that therefore Google’s advertising business should be broken up.
Officials said at the time that the tech giant’s involvement in multiple parts of the digital advertising supply chain creates “inherent conflicts of interest” that risk harming competition.
Illegal practices
“The Commission takes issue with Google favouring its own online display advertising technology services to the detriment of competing providers of advertising technology services, advertisers and online publishers,” the Commission said at the time.
It said Google had favoured its own ad exchange AdX in the ad selection auction run by its dominant publisher ad server DFP by, for example, informing AdX in advance of the value of the best bid from competitors which it had to beat to win the auction, and had favoured AdX in the way its Google Ads and DV360 place bids on ad exchanges.
For example, Google Ads was avoiding competing ad exchanges and mainly placing bids on AdX, thus making it the most attractive ad exchange, the Commission said.
Responding to a request for comment, Google referred to a 2023 blog post that said the Commission had used a flawed interpretation of the adtech sector and that publishers and advertisers have broad choice.