The French Competition Authority penalized the tech giant for abuse of power in the online advertising market.
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June
8, 2021
3 min read
The French Competition Authority imposed a fine on Google for 220 million euros (more than 5.2 billion Mexican pesos approximately). According to the authorities, the technology firm promotes its own services from the Internet advertising market , abusing its power completely. The US company did not deny the accusations and the fine is in a negotiation process.
This is not the first time that Google has gone through a similar situation, it is the object of French antitrust scrutiny regarding online advertising. Bruno Le Maire, the French Minister of Economy, mentioned that “The large platforms have progressively acquired dominant positions and it is essential to apply our competition rules to the digital giants that carry out their activity in our territory.”
How did they find out?
This event came to light when it was observed that the DPF advertising server, a place where publishers offer advertising space for sale, communicated to AdX (a platform that organizes auctions for advertising space) the prices proposed by other competitors and they adjusted their prices. auction proposals, commissions and increase your chances of winning, while benefiting Google’s advertising servers.
This action limited other ad servers to be part of the competition. However, the American company kept increasing its market share (which was already high) and its income.
“The decision to fine Google is particularly significant as it is the first in the world to tackle the complex algorithmic auction processes used for online display advertising,” said Isabelle de Silva , director of the French Competition Authority. .
What will Google change?
After accepting the charges against him, he has made a series of commitments to remedy the situation, one of them is to improve the interoperability of his Google Ad Manager services for third parties.
The American search engine is obliged to reestablish equity for a period of three years. This will give web page publishers the opportunity to maximize their advertising space, being committed by merit and having equal access to auction information.
The origin of this fine comes from previous complaints by News Corp. , Le Figaro and the Roussel La Voix group . Google may receive another type of sanction because it is suspected that it did not comply with an order related to its news service.