Tech giant faces third massive fine in past two years The European Commission alleged that Google broke EU antitrust regulations by preventing its competitors from…
Tech giant faces third massive fine in past two years
The European Commission alleged that Google broke EU antitrust regulations by preventing its competitors from working with companies partnered with Google. The fine centered around Google’s manipulation of AdSense online advertisements.
AdSense, a division of Google, brokers advertisements to appear in search results and on webpages across the internet. The ruling, in this case, was focused on one particular situation: when Google sells ads to appear above its search results on third-party sites. Google placed exclusivity clauses in the contract, preventing websites from selling ads on their page sold by Google’s competitors.
While Google slightly relaxed the exclusivity clauses in later years, they still retained the right to manipulate how competitors’ search ads might appear on the final webpage — including manipulating the size, color, and font of the advertisement used.
