European Union: Issued EU Commission Statement of Objections in investigation into Google over alleged abusive practices in online advertising, including preliminary findings recommending mandatory divestment

On 14 June 2023, the European Commission announced that it had sent a statement of objections to Google over abusive practices in the online advertising technology market as part of the investigation into alleged anticompetitive conduct and abuse of dominant position. In particular, based on its preliminary findings, the Commission stated that Google has a dominant position in publisher ad servers, as the owner of DoubleClick For Publishers (DFP), and in the programmatic ad buying tools for the open web market, based on Google Ads and DV360 services. The Commission preliminary found that Google abused its dominant position in the market, claiming that it favoured its advertising exchange, AdX, in the advertising selection auctioning that is led by its publisher ad server DFP. The Commission claimed that AdX had information on the best bid before the start of the auctioning, allowing it to win it against other competitors. Furthermore, the Commission stated that Google favoured its ad exchange AdX by placing Google Ads and DV360 bids mainly on this ad exchange platform. Finally, the Commission stated that based on its preliminary findings imposing behavioural remedies would be ineffective in preventing Google from self-preferencing its services and stated that the competition concerns would be addressed by mandatory divestment.