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Google and the European Commission have been doing all kinds of announcements lately. Just after the revelation that Google would implement a browser and a search engine selector in Android devices sold in the EU, Google's advertising division will be fined 1.5 billion euros (1, $ 69 billion). The European Commission's latest antitrust ruling indicates that Google's combination of its advertising platform with its custom search engine program is anti-competitive compared to other ad providers.
The particular wing of Google's advertising empire that concerns the Commission here is the "AdSense for Research." Adsense for research does not refer to the famous ads above Google.com's search results, but instead, the ads displayed in the "custom search" results can be included in their websites. We have a version on Ars – just click on the magnifying glass in the top navigation bar and search for something. You will not leave Ars Technica; Instead, you will get a customized version of Google Search integrated with arstechnica.com, with Google Ads above the results. These are "Adsense for Search" ads, and they are different from Google.com ads. The European Commission's decision concerns these "ads for personalized search engines".
The European Commission has provided this useful graph of Google's practices with regard to personalized search advertising.
The European Commission has examined "hundreds" of advertising contracts with Google and discovered a range of behaviors deemed anti-competitive by the Google ad division. First and foremost, from 2006 to 2009, Google ads had to be served exclusively on pages using Google Custom Search Engines. You were not allowed to use Google to crawl your site, then to serve Yahoo ads above the embedded results.
The Commission noted that Google had relaxed this requirement in 2009 and replaced it with another practice, which it found to be uncompetitive: the "premium placement" clauses. These clauses stipulated that, even if you could display personalized search ads from a competing ad provider, Google ads had to be in the top positions and you had to show a minimum number of ads. Google ads on your personalized search page. Changing the display mode of rival ads also required Google's written approval.
Basically, Google combined its advertising platform with its custom search engine for websites, and the European Commission found this arrangement to be anti-competitive vis-à-vis other ad providers. EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager presented the Commission's view on the situation: "Google has strengthened its dominant position in online search ads and has been sheltered competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on the websites of third parties antitrust rules.The misconduct lasted more than 10 years and deprived other companies of the opportunity to compete on the merits and to innovate – and to give consumers the benefits of competition. "
Google has not yet released a response to this latest fine.
