European regulators slapped Google with a roughly $1.7-billion fine on charges that its advertising practices violated local antitrust laws. It's the third time in three years that the watchdogs have penalized Google for harming competition and consumers.
EU Commissioner of Competition Margrethe Vestager gives a joint news conference March 20 after the antitrust regulator slapped Google with a new fine.
Margrethe Vestager, the European Union's top competition commissioner, announced the punishment at a news conference, accusing Google of engaging in"illegal practices" in a bid to"cement its dominant market position" in the search and advertising markets.The new penalty adds to Google's costly headaches in Europe, where Vestager now has fined the tech giant more than $9 billion in total for a series of antitrust violations.
The company's changes include a new effort, detailed Tuesday, to help owners of Android smartphones find and use competing search and web-browsing services. But the update only applies to Europe, Google said in a blog post without elaborating on whether it would alter some mobile practices in the United States.
But Google prohibited those third-party sites from using rival ad services, one of many restrictions on AdSense customers that led the European Commission to conclude in an initial complaint filed in 2016 that Google had acted anti-competitively. EU officials did acknowledge at the time that Google had changed its AdSense contracts to allow for"more freedom to display competing search ads.
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