France fines Google $345m for abusing ‘dominant’ ads position

Paris: Google is being fined €220 million ($345 million) by France’s antitrust watchdog for abusing its “dominant” position in online advertising.

Practices used by the search engine giant to sell ads “penalise Google’s competitors” along with publishers of mobile sites and applications, the Competition Authority said on Monday. It is the responsibility of a company with a dominant market position to avoid undermining its competition.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, did not dispute the facts and opted to settle after proposing some changes, according to a prepared statement from the Competition Authority.

The head of the authority, Isabelle de Silva, said the decision was unprecedented in the way that it delved into the complex algorithmic auctions that power Google’s online display advertising business.

The fine, along with Google’s commitment to changing its practices, “will make it possible to re-establish a level playing field for all players, and the ability for publishers to make the most of their advertising space,” de Silva said.

Google France’s legal director, Maria Gomri, said in a blog post on Monday that Google had been collaborating for the past two years with the French watchdog on issues related to ad technology, notably the platform known as Google Ad Manager. She wrote that commitments made during negotiations would “make it easier for publishers to make use of data and use our tools with other ad technologies.”

After tests in the months ahead, changes will be deployed more broadly, some of them globally, Gomri said.

The French authority’s investigation was prompted by complaints from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, French newspaper group Le Figaro and Belgium-based Rossel La Voix. Le Figaro later withdrew its complaint.