{"id":404167,"date":"2025-09-07T02:36:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T02:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/404167\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T02:36:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T02:36:11","slug":"eu-fines-google-nearly-e3bn-for-abusing-dominant-position-in-ad-tech-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/404167\/","title":{"rendered":"EU fines Google nearly \u20ac3bn for \u2018abusing\u2019 dominant position in ad tech | Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

European Union<\/a> regulators on Friday hit Google<\/a> with a \u20ac2.95bn ($3.5bn) fine for breaching the bloc\u2019s competition rules by favoring its own digital advertising<\/a> services, marking the fourth such antitrust penalty for the company as well as a retreat from previous threats to break up the tech giant.<\/p>\n

The European Commission<\/a>, the 27-nation bloc\u2019s executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, also ordered the US company to end its \u201cself-preferencing practices\u201d and take steps to stop \u201cconflicts of interest\u201d along the advertising technology supply chain.<\/p>\n

The commission\u2019s investigation found that Google<\/a> had \u201cabused\u201d its dominant positions in the ad-technology ecosystem.<\/p>\n

Google said the decision was \u201cwrong\u201d and that it would appeal.<\/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 Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company\u2019s global head of regulatory affairs, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The decision arrived more than two years after the European Commission announced antitrust charges against Google. The commission had said at the time that the only way to satisfy antitrust concerns about Google\u2019s lucrative digital ad business was to sell off parts of its business. However, this decision marks a retreat from that earlier position and comes amid renewed tensions between Brussels and the Trump administration over trade, tariffs and technology regulation.<\/p>\n

Top EU officials had said earlier 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.<\/p>\n

The commission\u2019s penalty follows a formal investigation that it opened in June 2021, looking into whether Google violated the bloc\u2019s competition rules by favoring its own online display advertising technology services at the expense of rival publishers, advertisers and advertising technology services. Online display ads are banners and text that appear on websites and are personalized based on an internet user\u2019s browsing history.<\/p>\n

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Mulholland said: \u201cThere\u2019s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European Union regulators on Friday hit Google with a \u20ac2.95bn ($3.5bn) fine for breaching the bloc\u2019s competition rules…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187],"class_list":{"0":"post-404167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115160690404910511","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}