For those who haven’t stumbled across the latest Google News, it looks like the EU is about to send a strong message to Google
The Commission preliminarily finds that, since at least 2014, Google abused its dominant positions by:
- Favouring its own ad exchange AdX in the ad selection auction run by its dominant publisher ad server DFP by, for example, informing AdX in advance of the value of the best bid from competitors which it had to beat to win the auction.
- Favouring its ad exchange AdX in the way its ad buying tools Google Ads and DV360 place bids on ad exchanges. For example, Google Ads was avoiding competing ad exchanges and mainly placing bids on AdX, thus making it the most attractive ad exchange.
This doesn’t come as a shock to anyone right?
I find it really interesting that they claim that a behavioural remedy would not be effective.
The Commission preliminarily finds that, in this particular case, a behavioural remedy is likely to be ineffective to prevent the risk that Google continues such self-preferencing conducts or engages in new ones.
It’ll be interesting to see how Google responds to this, and how it changes the landscape.
Thoughts?
