On 11 March 2022, the European Commission opened an investigation into Google and Meta, previously Facebook, to determine if the companies entered into an illegal agreement to exclude Google’s competitors from the advertising market. The service “open bidding programme”, owned by Google, intermediates auctions for online display advertising space on web pages and applications. Meta offers online display advertising services and partakes in auctions through its “Meta audience network” using the advertising technology services offered by Google and Google’s competitors. The Commission investigation aims to determine if the participation of Meta's Audience Network in Google's “open bidding programme” was due to an agreement from 2018 to exclude Google’s competitors from the online display advertising market. The Commission will determine if Meta used exclusively Google’s services due to an agreement, which if proven would represent a violation of the European Union competition rules on anti-competitive agreements.
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