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European Union Hits Google With Another Antitrust Fine

The European Union seems to have lost all patience for playing games with big tech companies. Today, the European Union announced that it fined Google €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion). It’s the company’s third antitrust violation in the country since 2017. The fine came because Google was blocking rival online search advertisers. In a statement, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said, “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.” Through Google’s AdSense for Search, the company provided ads for websites, like those of newspapers, with a search function that also comes up with results and ads. Google would stop publishers from including any search ads from its competitors on their page results. This meant the publishers were relying on Google in order to profit from ads. In addition, a 2009 clause also made publishers seek Google’s...

Vanessa Taylor

Mar 20, 2019