Accumulated by the EU, Google has been punished with billions of dollars, and is again subject to new EU investigations on suspicion of illegally manipulating the cost of advertising its search engine. According to a letter from Bloomberg, dated 9 February, addressed to potentially affected enterprises, the European Commission suspects that Google is “man-made to raise” the “settlement price” for the advertising auction “to the detriment of the advertiser”. The Brussels-based regulator indicated that, if supported by evidence, Google could violate competition rules and could lead to fines of up to 10 per cent of global annual sales.
In a joint request for information, EU regulators asked market participants about Google’s dominance in multiple online advertising markets. According to sources, while the investigation is still in its preliminary stages, the Commissioner for Competition, Teresa Ribeira, may officially announce its launch in the near future. Google responded in an e-mail statement: “Google search advertising helps small businesses compete with the largest brand, boosts economic growth and keeps the network free for all. Advertising prices are determined by a real-time competitive mechanism designed to show people the most relevant advertisements, taking into account factors such as the competition of advertisers and the quality of advertising.” Similar allegations had previously been brought against Google by the United States Department of Justice. The United States has tried to force Google to sell its Chrome browser — an initiative that is currently being vetoed by a Washington judge.
This European review could further increase the total amount of Google fines in the European Union, which has now accumulated €9.5 billion, and could worsen relations with the Trump Government. This is also one of the new surveys launched by the EU in recent weeks on Google. According to the EU’s strong Digital Markets Act (DMA), Google has recently been set a six-month deadline to remove the technical barriers to its competitor AI search assistant on the Anjo platform and to provide key data to other search engines.
In addition, Google is facing upcoming sanctions under DMA, alleging unfair favouring of its own services in the vast search empire and preventing the application of developmentists from directing consumers to use their preferences outside Play Store. Google was also investigated for allegedly unfairly lowering the ranking of some news results.
