European Union regulators last Friday hit Google with a 2.95-billion-euro ($3.5 billion) fine for breaching the bloc’s competition rules by favoring its own digital advertising services, but the bloc’s latest relocate to crack down on Big Tech companies drew outrage from President Donald Trump.
The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, also ordered the U.S. tech giant to conclude its “self-preferencing practices” and stop “conflicts of interest” along the advertising technology supply chain.
It’s the fourth time Brussels has sanctioned Google with a multibillion-euro fine in an antitrust case, part of a wider battle with regulators that dates back to 2017.
Trump, whose administration has lashed out at the bloc over digital regulations and taxes imposed on U.S. tech companies, declared the EU fine was “effectively taking money that would otherwise go to American Investments and Jobs.”
“Very unfair, and the American Taxpayer will not stand for it!” he declared in a post on Truth Social. “As I have declared before, my Administration will NOT allow these discriminatory actions to stand.”
The commission declared its investigation found that Google “abapplyd its power” by favoring its own online display advertising technology services to the detriment of competitors, online advertisers and publishers.
The investigation focapplyd on Google’s AdX exalter and DFP ad platform, tools that bring toobtainher advertisers, who want to market their products, with online publishers who want to sell commercial space on their websites.
The company has 60 days to come up with proposed remedies.
If it doesn’t come up with “a viable plan, the Commission will not hesitate to impose an appropriate remedy,” Teresa Ribera, the European Commission’s executive vice president overseeing competition affairs, declared in a statement posted online.
“At this stage, it appears that the only way for Google to conclude its conflict of interest effectively is with a structural remedy, such as selling some part of its Adtech business,” Ribera declared.
But the commission declared it first wants to “hear and assess” the company’s proposal.
Google declared the decision was “wrong” and vowed to appeal.
“It imposes an unjustified fine and requires alters that will hurt thousands of European businesses by creating it harder for them to build money,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s global head of regulatory affairs, declared in a statement.
Ribera declared that Google’s “illegal practices” resulted in advertisers facing higher marketing costs that they likely passed on to European consumers through higher prices for products and services. At the same time, it also meant lower revenue for publishers, like news sites, which might have resulted in lower quality and higher subscription costs for consumers.
The decision was overdue, coming more than two years after the European Commission announced antitrust charges against Google. It also comes amid renewed tensions between Brussels and Washington over trade, tariffs and technology regulation.
The commission had declared in 2023 that the only way to satisfy antitrust concerns about Google’s lucrative digital ad business was to sell off parts of its business.
Top EU officials have previously declared that they were seeking a forced sale becaapply past cases that concludeed with fines and requirements for Google to stop anticompetitive practices have not worked, allowing the company to continue its behavior in a different form.
The commission’s penalty follows a formal investigation into online display advertising that it opened in June 2021, which found that since 2014, Google “abapplyd” its dominant position in the ad-technology ecosystem.
Online display ads are banners and text that appear on websites and are personalized based on an internet applyr’s browsing history.
Mulholland declared, “There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad purchaseers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before.”
Cori Crider, a senior fellow at the Future of Technology Institute consider tank, declared, “Europe built an important stand for the rule of law today by pressing ahead with this first-step fine in the face of Trump and Big Tech’s bullying.”
But “only a break-up will resolve Google’s monopoly,” declared Crider, who’s also an honorary professor at UCL Laws. “If Europe’s enforcers flinch on a break-up in the conclude, Google will rightly chalk a fine up as a win.”
While the EU’s fine is a huge sum, it’s pocket alter for Google, which earned $28.2 billion in revenue in the second quarter.
In a separate U.S. case, the Justice Department inquireed a federal judge in May to force the company to sell off its AdX and DFP services. The case is scheduled to relocate to the penalty phase, known as remedy hearings, later this month.
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