Turkiye: Ruling against Google for abuse of dominance in digital advertising market

On 12 November 2020, Google was sanctioned with a fine of TRY 196.7 million for abusing its dominance in the digital advertising market. Google was fined for restricting competitors from using any other advertisement brokers other than its own advertisement platforms, Google Adsense and Google Adwords. Google did so by restricting the appearance of competitors in its search results if they did not use the two Google-based advertisement platforms. Furthermore, Google was given a cease-and-desist order which it needs to comply with within 6 months. Google has to stop excluding organic search results and start reporting its compliance measures to the Board of the Turkish Competition Authority annually for 5 years. Google can lodge an appeal within 60 days.