European Union accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the digital advertising sector

Gulf Today Report

The European Union has accused the search giant Google of breaching antitrust rules in the field of advertising technology, known as adtech, and may seek to dismantle parts of the tech giant's business to allay the European bloc's concerns.

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, has reached a tentative conclusion that Google is dominant in the European market for publisher ad servers and digital ad buying tools.

The committee also said that Google had abused this dominant position since at least 2014.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, will have the opportunity to review the concerns raised by the committee and defend itself in writing, in addition to the possibility of holding a hearing with representatives from the company to comment on the charges.

"The Commission's initial view is that only Google's compulsory withdrawal of part of its services will address competition concerns," EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.

She added, “Google collects user data, sells advertising space, and acts as an online advertising broker, so it is present at all levels of the so-called advertising technology supply chain. Our initial concern is that Google may have used its market position to benefit its own intermediary services, harming not only Google's competitors, but also the interests of publishers, while increasing costs for advertisers. If confirmed, the company's practices would be illegal under our competition rules.