{"id":45611,"date":"2025-09-05T16:28:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T16:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/45611\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T16:28:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T16:28:07","slug":"european-commission-hits-google-with-e2-9bn-fine-for-distorting-online-ad-industry-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/45611\/","title":{"rendered":"European Commission hits Google with \u20ac2.9bn fine for \u2018distorting\u2019 online ad industry \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google <\/a>has been hit with a \u20ac2.9 billion fine by the European Commission<\/a>, for breaching competition laws by unfairly pushing its own advertising services, to the detriment of competitors.<\/p>\n

The financial penalty follows an investigation by the EU\u2019s powerful executive arm, which has used its antitrust laws to try to rein in US tech multinationals and social media giants over the last decade. <\/p>\n

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and her officials will likely be bracing for a possible hostile response to the decision from US president Donald Trump. <\/p>\n

The commission investigation found Google had distorted the online advertising industry, by unfairly favouring its own advertising services over other rivals in the adtech sector.<\/p>\n

The commission said it had ordered Google \u201cto bring these self-preferencing practices to an end\u201d. The US tech multinational, whose main source of revenue comes from selling online advertising, was fined \u20ac2.95 billion by the commission. <\/p>\n

In a statement, Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google\u2019s vice-president for regulatory affairs, said the commission\u2019s decision was wrong and the company would appeal it in the courts. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

The decision to levy the fine on Google was reportedly a point of tension within the top rungs of the commission in recent days. <\/p>\n

Teresa Ribera, the EU\u2019s competition chief, is said to have come up against pressure to delay hitting Google with a hefty fine, from EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic, a key figure in the recent deal on tariffs negotiated between Brussels and Washington. <\/p>\n

Some inside the commission are concerned that moving ahead with financial penalties on US tech firms, for breaches of EU competition rules or the union\u2019s new digital regulations, risk upending a fragile truce that headed off a potential tariff war. <\/p>\n

Mr Trump has frequently criticised EU fines of US tech multinationals as unfair and punitive. <\/p>\n

The US president recently threatened to levy extra import tariffs of countries who used digital regulations to target US companies. <\/p>\n

Google has clashed with the commission\u2019s enforcers on several occasions during former EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager\u2019s time in office. The Danish politician used the bloc\u2019s powerful antitrust rules to take several high-profile cases against Big Tech. <\/p>\n

Google was previously fined \u20ac2.4 billion by the commission in 2017 for abusing its dominance as the world\u2019s most popular search engine. <\/p>\n

The US multinational was hit with a further \u20ac4.3 billion sanction for anticompetitive practices connected to its Android mobile phone operating systems the following year. <\/p>\n

Another \u20ac1.4 billion fine handed down to the company in 2019 for crowding out rival advertising services was later overturned in the courts. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Google has been hit with a \u20ac2.9 billion fine by the European Commission, for breaching competition laws by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,5766,823,19,17,4894],"class_list":{"0":"post-45611","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-european-commission","11":"tag-google","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}