By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Alphabet’s Google is set to face a modest EU antitrust fine in the coming weeks for allegedly anti-competitive practices in its adtech business, three people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The decision by the European Commission follows a four-year long investigation triggered by a complaint from the European Publishers Council that subsequently led to charges in 2023 that Google allegedly favours its own advertising services over rivals.
The modest fine will mark a shift in new EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera’s approach to Big Tech violations from predecessor Margrethe Vestager’s focus on hefty deterrent penalties.
The sources said Ribera wants to focus on getting companies to end anti-competitive practices rather than punish them. The EU competition enforcer declined to comment.
Google referred to a 2023 blog post in which it criticised what it said was the Commission’s flawed interpretation of the adtech sector and that both publishers and advertisers have enormous choice.
The fine will likely not be on the scale of a record 4.3 billion euro penalty imposed on Google by the EU competition enforcer in 2018 for using its Android mobile operating system to quash rivals.
The company was also slapped with a 2.42 billion euro fine in 2017 for using its own price comparison shopping service to gain an unfair advantage over smaller European rivals, and a 1.49 billion euro fine in 2019 for abusing its dominance to stop websites using brokers other than its AdSense platform.
Google’s 2024 advertising revenue, including from search services, Gmail, Google Play, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Ad Manager, AdMob and AdSense, amounted to $264.6 billion or 75.6% of total revenue. It is the world’s dominant digital-advertising platform.
Google does not provide revenue figures for its adtech business which relates to advertising on other websites and not Search ads.
Ribera will not order Google to sell part of its adtech business, despite her predecessor’s suggestion that the company could divest its DoubleClick for Publishers tool and AdX ad exchange, the people said, confirming a Reuters story last year.
They said the EU may not have to issue a break-up order at all as a U.S. judge has set a September trial date on potential remedies for Google’s dominance in ad tools used by online publishers.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
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