The European Union has imposed a penalty of 2.95 billion euros ($3.45bn) on Google for favouring its own advertising services, marking the fourth time the tech giant has been fined in its decade-long fight with the bloc’s competition regulators.
The European Commission accused Google of distorting competition in the 27-nation bloc after investigating a complaint from the European Publishers Council, moving to rein in the tech firm despite threats of retaliation from United States President Donald Trump.
EU competition chief Teresa Ribera had originally planned to hand out the fine on Monday, but delayed her move after meeting opposition from EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic over concerns about the potential impact on US promises to lower tariffs on European cars under a trade deal agreed in July.
The Commission said Google favoured its own online display technology services to the detriment of rivals and online publishers and that it has abused its market power from 2014 until today.
“Google abused its dominant position in adtech, harming publishers, advertisers, and consumers. This behaviour is illegal under EU antitrust rules,” Ribera said on Friday.
Regulators had been probing Google over adtech since 2021 and in 2023 recommended the company sell part of its ad services to ensure fair competition.
Google, a subsidiary of US tech giant Alphabet, criticised the EU decision and said it would challenge it in court.
Lee-Anne Mulholland, the firm’s global head of regulatory affairs, said it required “changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money”.
“There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before,” she added.
Ribera said Google had to come forward with a “serious remedy to address its conflicts of interest”, warning that failure to do so would invite “strong remedies”.
The company has 60 days to inform the Commission how it plans to comply with this order.
The fine was the third imposed on the giant in a week. A US federal jury on Wednesday ordered Google to pay about $425m for gathering information from smartphone app use, even when people opted for privacy settings.
The same day, France’s data protection authority fined the search giant 325 million euros ($378m) for failing to respect the law on internet cookies.
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