France’s competition authority fined Google 150 million euros ($166 million) on Friday for “abusing its dominant position” in the online ad market.
The agency said the U.S. tech company mistreated buyers of ads based on keywords. Methods used by its Google Ads platform are “opaque and difficult to understand” and the company applies them in an “unequal and arbitrary way,” it said.
It also ordered Google to clarify the rules for Google Ads and its procedures for freezing accounts, to avoid “brutal and unjustified” suspensions.
© Provided by Associated Press FILE - In this Monday, Nov. 18, 2019 file photo, the logo of Google is displayed on a carpet at the entrance hall of Google France in Paris. France's competition authority has fined Google 150 million euros ($166 million) for "abusing its dominant position" in the online ad market. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File) It’s the latest in a string of European fines against Google, which faces very little competition for search engine business across the continent. The company has been hit in recent years with multibillion-dollar fines imposed by European Union authorities for unrelated antitrust cases and is also facing increasing regulator pressure on other fronts in Europe and the U.S.
Google said in a statement that it would appeal, and that its advertising policies are designed to protect consumers “from exploitative and abusive ads.”
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While it says Google’s argument that it’s protecting consumers is “perfectly legitimate,” its rules are applied incoherently, with some companies’ ads allowed and others that sell similar services suspended, the authority said.
It accused the company of “at best negligence, at worst opportunism” by initially offering services to advertisers that it considers dubious and later suspends, just to grow profits.
The ruling details multiple questions about Google’s ad algorithms that the competition authority says have gone unanswered.
nzur1 on December 22nd, 2019 at 00:06 UTC »
If im reading the article correctly google was offering its ad services to businesses and then after they signed up and google would post their ads then they would "realize" that the businesses were not legit and they would cancel promoting their business.
France thinks they should have known before they signed them that they were scammy businesses and that offering their ads was either negligent or opportunistic and that they decide which businesses to stop promoting sort of arbitrarily. (it also seemed like France was on the side of the scammy businesses?)
Doesn't really seem like a big deal tbh. Shouldn't google be able to stop offering ads of 10 % of their scammy businesses or 50% or 75%. I mean ideally they would cancel all of them or not offer them services in the first place but that seems more difficult without customer feedback/ more datapoint.
captnmr on December 22nd, 2019 at 00:04 UTC »
Google was fined because Google uses machine learning to set ads prices and displays. Google didn’t get fined for some monopoly or privacy reasons. The French regulator wants Google to say something like: - Keyword: “pants” - Cost: $.10/click
Google doesn’t work like this and uses an internal bidding mechanism to display the highest paying ads that has the highest chance of getting a click. As you know ads are personalized so the price varies per click. Companies can set a max so there’s no abuse here...
veryunderstated on December 21st, 2019 at 20:56 UTC »
I don't know if Google can handle a fine of this magnitude