Google announces a 1.5 billion euro fine on the part of the EU for its publicity

The EU has blocked 1.49 billion euros in the EU for blocking rival advertisers in online searches.

This is the third EU fine for the research and advertising giant in two years.

The case accuses Google of abusing its dominant position in the market by preventing third-party competitors from posting search ads between 2006 and 2016.

In response, Google changed its AdSense contracts with significant third parties, which gave them more leeway to post competing search ads.

Alphabet, owner of Google, draws a lot of money from advertising – pre-tax profits reached 30.7 billion dollars (23 billion pounds sterling) in 2018, compared to 12.66 billion dollars in 2017.

"Google has strengthened its dominant position in online search ads and is protected from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites.

"This is illegal under the antitrust rules of the EU," said EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

Last year, the EU's competition authority hit Google with a record fine of 4.34 billion euros for using its Android mobile operating system popular to block its competitors.

This followed a fine of 2.42 billion euros in 2017 for hindering competition from website comparison sites.

Adsense good

The European Commission has stated that websites often have an integrated search function.

When a user uses it, the website provides both the search results and the search ads, which appear next to the search result.

Google's "Adsense for search" product offers these ads to website publishers.

The Commission described Google as acting as "an intermediary, as an advertising broker".

In 2006, Google began including "exclusivity clauses" in contracts that prevented publishers from placing ads from Google rivals such as Microsoft and Yahoo on search pages, the commission said.