Brussels: Alphabet Google may have to sell part of its lucrative edtech business to address concerns about anti-competitive practices, EU regulator said on Wednesday, threatening the company with the toughest regulatory penalties ever. The European Commission Google set out its charges in a statement of objections two years after launching an investigation into practices such as favoring its own advertising services, which could lead to fines of up to 10%. Google annual global turnover,
The stakes are high for Google in this latest conflict with regulators because it concerns the company’s biggest money maker, with the edtech business accounting for 79% of total revenue last year. Its 2022 advertising revenue, which includes search services, Gmail, Google Play, Google MapYouTube ads, Google Ad Manager, AdMob and AdSense amounted to $224.5 billion.
EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said Google may have to sell part of its edtech business as a practical measure to stop anti-competitive practices is unlikely to be effective. “For example, Google could split its sell-side tools, DFP and AdX. By doing so, we would eliminate the conflict of interest,” she told a news conference. Google said it disagrees with the commission’s allegation. “The Commission’s investigation focuses on a narrow aspect of our advertising business and is nothing new. We disagree with the EC’s approach,” Dan Taylor, Google’s vice president of global advertising, said in a statement.
The European Publishers Council, which lodged a complaint with the Commission last year, welcomed the allegation. The Commission said that Google favors its own online display advertising technology services to the detriment of competing providers of advertising technology services, advertisers and online publishers. It said Google has supported AdX since 2014 by supporting its own ad exchange AdX in ad selection auctions by its flagship publisher ad server DFP, and by bidding on the ad exchanges of its ad buying tools Google Ads and DV360. abused his authority. , According to research firm Insider Intelligence, Google is the world’s leading digital advertising platform with a 28% market share of global advertising revenue.
The stakes are high for Google in this latest conflict with regulators because it concerns the company’s biggest money maker, with the edtech business accounting for 79% of total revenue last year. Its 2022 advertising revenue, which includes search services, Gmail, Google Play, Google MapYouTube ads, Google Ad Manager, AdMob and AdSense amounted to $224.5 billion.
EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said Google may have to sell part of its edtech business as a practical measure to stop anti-competitive practices is unlikely to be effective. “For example, Google could split its sell-side tools, DFP and AdX. By doing so, we would eliminate the conflict of interest,” she told a news conference. Google said it disagrees with the commission’s allegation. “The Commission’s investigation focuses on a narrow aspect of our advertising business and is nothing new. We disagree with the EC’s approach,” Dan Taylor, Google’s vice president of global advertising, said in a statement.
The European Publishers Council, which lodged a complaint with the Commission last year, welcomed the allegation. The Commission said that Google favors its own online display advertising technology services to the detriment of competing providers of advertising technology services, advertisers and online publishers. It said Google has supported AdX since 2014 by supporting its own ad exchange AdX in ad selection auctions by its flagship publisher ad server DFP, and by bidding on the ad exchanges of its ad buying tools Google Ads and DV360. abused his authority. , According to research firm Insider Intelligence, Google is the world’s leading digital advertising platform with a 28% market share of global advertising revenue.