EU wants to split up Google's ad business

The EU Commission is once again going after Google and this time around, it's about the company's ad business. The European officials have once again found evidence of wrongdoing in the advertisement field.

Since Google is in pretty much every step of the so-called adtech supply chain, the company is using its dominant market position to favor its own intermediation services. Interestingly enough, the US Department of Justice is also suing Google for its ad business and wants to split it up as it's illegally monopolizing the market.

Google has set up services for both advertisers and publishers. In addition, Google has created an ad exchange called AdX, which is often favored by the other two services related to advertisers and publishers. In short, Google is on the buy and sell side.

First, AdX is able to bid after all bidders have already placed their bids and secondly, Google is informed in advance of the best bids from rivals. On the supply side, Google Ads places bids almost exclusively on its AdX exchange platform.

European officials strongly believe that Google won't take action on its own, so the EU Commission needs to intervene and potentially break up Google's ad business. Google still has time to appeal, but if it fails, it faces a potential break-up and a 10% fine of its yearly global turnover.

Source