EU probes Google for breaching competition law

The European Commission on Wednesday notified Google that it might have breached the EU competition law according to their investigations.

“We are concerned that Google may have illegally distorted competition in the online advertising technology industry,” EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said at a news conference.

She explained that after launching an investigation into Google’s activities on the ad tech chain in 2021, the EU executive body sent a formal notification called “Statement of Objections” to the tech giant.

“We found that Google may have abused its dominant position by favoring its own ad tech services,” Vestager explained.

According to the investigation, Google is the most important player in the market of ad tech services offered for publishers and advertisers, as well as operating a matching function called AdX.

The EU executive body assumes that it had abused its leading position “by ensuring that both its intermediation tools on the buy-side and on the sell-side would favor AdX in the ‘matching’ auctions,” Vestager explained.

“Rather than letting the best of the ad exchanges win the race, the helping hand of the powerful Google ecosystem gave Google's own exchange a unique head start over all other rivals in the industry,” she further said.

As the next step of the investigation that may lead to another heavy fine on the tech company, Google can reply to the European Commission’s letter.

In the past years, the EU executive body imposed a penalty of €2.4 billion ($2.6 billion) and €4.3 billion ($4.7 billion) on Google for abusing its dominant position in the market of online searches and related Android operating systems.

Maintaining fair competition in the EU’s internal market is one of the few exclusive competencies of the EU, allowing the European Commission to fine companies for breaching antitrust law.