Google advertising contracts could be the latest target of an aggressive European Union campaign against the search giant and its parent company, Alphabet. Margrethe Vestager, head of the European Commission’s competition policy said the Commission is looking into Google advertising contracts and will reach a decision soon. If the EU/EC decide to pursue some sort of investigation into Google advertising contracts, that would make three different areas the EU/EC are targeting Google for. Google may already be facing a $3.4 billion dollar fine over possibly giving Google services preferred search result treatment. The EC had been investigating Google’s Ad Words division back in 2010 but the investigation got put on hold, probably to concentrate on the search investigation. But Vestager has decided to re-open the possibility of Google advertising being an issue that the EU/EC wants to deal with.
Google has been fighting back. It rejected the charges, and stepped up its lobbying efforts in Brussels. Google shelled out about $4.5 million trying to influence EU policy making in 2014, its latest transparency filing showed. That was a threefold increase over its 2013 spending in Europe.
The commission first charged Google in April last year, saying the company systematically favors its own search results above competitors’. A report in the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph said Europe will impose a record antitrust fine on Google in this case within the next few weeks.
For whatever reasons, the EU/EC seem to have their cross hairs directly on Google and Alphabet and are being very aggressive in pursuing whatever beef they have against the company. We’ll be sure to keep following this new development and bring you more news as it comes.
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[button link=”http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/16/technology/google-european-union/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: CNN Money[/button]Last Updated on January 23, 2017.
