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BUSINESS

EU’s largest antitrust fines

By Duncan Mil

March 21, 2019 - The European Commission has fined Google €1.49 billion ($1.69b) for breaching EU antitrust rules and unfairly shielding its AdSense advertising platform from competition.

EU antitrust guru Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: "Today the Commission has fined Google €1.49 billion for illegal misuse of its dominant position in the market for the brokering of online search adverts. Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules. The misconduct lasted over 10 years and denied other companies the possibility to compete on the merits and to innovate - and consumers the benefits of competition.”

Websites such as newspaper websites, blogs or travel sites aggregators often have a search function embedded. When a user searches using this search function, the website delivers both search results and search adverts, which appear alongside the search result.

Through AdSense for Search, Google provides these search adverts to owners of “publisher” websites. Google is an intermediary, like an advertising broker, between advertisers and website owners that want to profit from the space around their search results pages. Therefore, AdSense for Search works as an online search advertising intermediation platform.

Sources
PUBLISHED: 21/03/2019; STORY: Graphic News; PICTURES: Associated Press
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