The EU’s commissioner for competition, Margrethe Vestager, said Wednesday that Google must pay 1.49 billion euros ($1.69 billion) for stifling competition in the online advertisement sector.
Google’s Adsense pushes ads triggered by search engines embedded websites. Rival firms to Google had claimed the product was placed on websites with the understanding that no other systems could be on the same page.
The Alphabet company has previously defended its use of the technology, claiming it has been in place since 2006, is now superseded, and is a minor product.
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In the fourth quarter of 2018, Google’s core advertising business saw revenue increase 20 percent from the previous quarter to $32.6 billion — the same rate of growth as the last quarter.
It is the third antitrust fine from Brussels to land onGoogle’s desk.
Last July, regulators in Brussels hit the Alphabet unit with a $5 billion fine for abusing the dominance of its Android mobile operating system.
In a blog post Tuesday Google’s SVP of Global Affairs, Kent Walker, wrote that European Android customers will now be asked which apps they would like to use instead.
In 2017 Google, received a $2.7 billion penalty from the EU for favoring its shopping service over competitors.
Source: cnbc.com | Original Link