The antitrust case against Google antitrust lawsuit 2021

Today The European Union announced it has launched an antitrust case against Google. It has initiated wide-ranging antitrust investigations against Google on Tuesday over concerns that it is forcing out rivals in the lucrative online advertising market. The Google antitrust lawsuit, which according to sources is designed to break the monopoly Google holds over online advertising.

Some political analysts and commentators have said these lawsuits have been driven by the deep pockets of the Murdoch group Newscorp who have been at loggerheads with Google for the last decade over advertising and copyright over the news in google search.

The investigation will “assess whether Google has violated EU competition rules by favouring its own online display advertising technology services”, a statement said.

The probe narrows in on an important slice of Google´s business model where over 80 per cent of the giant’s revenue last year came from advertising, or $147 billion (124 billion euros).

Google issued a statement regarding Google antitrust lawsuit and a spokesperson said the company

“will continue to engage constructively with the European Commission to answer their questions and demonstrate the benefits of our products to European businesses and consumers.”

Google antitrust investigation

As in France, the EU will try to determine whether Google gave preferential treatment to its own ad inventory technologies AdX and Doubleclick, but will also look at other aspects of its business.

Crucially, the probe will also look into Google’s announced plans to prohibit the placement of third party “cookies” on its Chrome browser, a move that has angered some publishers and advertisers.

Background on Google antitrust lawsuit EU

The EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement that “We are concerned that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete” in display ad technology.

Google has a history with the EU. This is not the first time the European Union has taken on the big tech giants and earlier this year. The business was also at the heart of a recent case in France — brought by News Corp, French daily Le Figaro and Belgium’s Groupe Rossel and fined Google 220 million euros ($267 million).

The EU and the United States sue Google for anti-competitive ad practices — The antitrust case against Google – EU launches a new initiative to tackle multinational corporations

Why did the EU sue Google?

The European Commission fined Google its parent company Alphabet Inc. 2.4 billion euros ($2.7 billion) in 2017 after finding the company violated antitrust rules by allegedly abusing its dominance in search to advantage its own shopping comparison product over competitors’

What is Google antitrust issue?

Google, which controls one-third of the global advertising industry, has been accused of abusing its monopoly over the digital programmatic ads market. It uses its own exchange to win ad auctions despite higher bids by competitors and overcharged publishers for ads.

How does google control the market?

Google supplies free or pays per use ad servers to publishers, which are recommended to be used by publishers to maintain the advertising standards and market guidelines. It then places bids for its own marketplace through these ad servers and that favours google ads from googles marketplace.

What will happen to google?

It is not clear how the EU will approach this investigation but sources inside Brussels have suggested the domination of the American tech giants in the EU irks many ministers. However, from a legal perspective, the EU will push to break the company down so it can no longer monopolise publisher inventory by lowering bid rates. The proposed Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act could force major tech companies such as Google and Apple to pay fines as high as 10% of their annual turnover should they not comply with proper anti-competitive practices.

Google in hot water in the United States

Google and its parent company have been under the proverbial gun in the United States as well. The federal government has also launched its own anti-trust investigations this year. The criticism has been extended to other major tech companies, including Facebook, Apple and Amazon.

Nine of Google’s products in search, video, mail and other areas are estimated to have over 1 billion users each, providing the company with a vast amount of user data that it can use in the advertising sphere.

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The antitrust case against Google antitrust lawsuit 2021

Google antitrust investigation