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Google’s antitrust drama will now be served without ice.
European regulators have filed charges that claim Google’s ad-tech business is violating EU antitrust laws. The company could be split up or face fines of up to 10% of its annual global revenue. That’s about $28 billion, based on the company’s 2022 earnings.
The European Commission “takes issue with Google favoring its own online display advertising technology services to the detriment of competing providers of advertising technology services, advertisers and online publishers,” it said in a statement, alleging that the company has abused its dominance “since at least 2014.”
“Today’s Statement of Objections from the European Commission sets out claims that are not new and relate to a narrow part of our advertising business,” Dan Taylor, Google’s VP of global ads, said in a blog post following the announcement. “We look forward to showing how we have enabled higher-quality, more effective digital ads that have helped fund broader access to content and information online for everyone.”
If this sounds like déjà vu, it’s because the Department of Justice is also suing Google for similar antitrust concerns, claiming the company pockets at least 30 cents of every dollar that flows from advertisers to publishers.
“Google controls both sides of the #adtech market: sell & buy. We are concerned that it may have abused its dominance to favor its own #AdX platform. If confirmed, this is illegal,” Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner overseeing competition, tweeted.
Stateside, the DOJ aims to order Google to divest from or sell its sell-side business. The European Commission’s ask is a bit more vague, calling for the “mandatory divestment by Google of part of its services” to “address its competition concerns.”
The EU and Google have a history. In 2018, the commission hit Google with a more than $4 billion antitrust fine related to the company’s Android mobile operating system, a decision thatGoogle has twice appealed. In 2019, Google faced a separate $1.7 billion antitrust fine related to its advertising business.