Google agrees to change advertising practices after €220 million French antitrust penalty

French antitrust regulator found in its probe that Google had abused its power in the complex online advertising market

Technology giant Google has agreed to pay a €220 million (about £190 million) fine and make changes to some of its ad services as part of an antitrust settlement with French antitrust watchdog.

On Monday, the French Competition Authority (FCA) announced that following a two-year-long investigation, it has found that Google abused its power in the complex online advertising market, putting other firms at a disadvantage.

In this probe, the regulator focused specifically on ties between Google Ad Manager and Google SSP AdX listing platform.

Publishers use Google Ad Manager to auction ad space, while SSP AdX organises auctions and enables publishers to sell their ad "impressions" to advertisers.

The regulator found in the investigation that Google gave preferential treatment to its Ad Manager and SSP AdX listing platform by sharing strategic data across them but restricting data sharing with rival systems.

The FCA said its decision will open the way for disadvantaged publishers to seek monetary damages from the company.

France's antitrust chief Isabelle de Silva said that the probe is the first in the world to focus on "complex algorithmic auction processes on which the online ad business relies".

Google has agreed to pay the fine and end ad practices that give preferential treatment to company's own services.

The firm would not seek to appeal the regulator's decision in court, the FCA said.

Moreover, the company will take several steps over the next three years to level the playing field better for AdX, under the supervision of an independent trustee. Some changes will be implemented by the first quarter of the next year.

Google said it will test and develop "these changes over the coming months before rolling them out more broadly, including some globally".

"We will further increase the flexibility of Google Ad Manager to meet the evolving needs of our partners, including allowing them to set custom pricing rules for ads that are in sensitive categories and implementing product changes that improve interoperability between Ad Manager and third-party ad servers," the company said in a blog post.

"Also, we are reaffirming that we will not limit Ad Manager publishers from negotiating specific terms or pricing directly with other sell-side platforms (SSPs). And we will continue to provide Ad Manager publishers with controls to include or exclude certain buyers at their discretion," it added.

This is not the first time that French regulator has imposed a financial penalty on Google in antitrust case.

In 2019, Google was fined €150 million by France's competition regulator over mistreatment of advertisers using the company's AdWords service.

The watchdog said at the time that Google had acted in a seemingly arbitrary manner by randomly suspending advertisers, causing losses to the businesses due to Google's market dominance. The company was also ordered to "clarify the rules of its Google Ads advertising platform and the procedures" for suspending advertisers' accounts.

The same year, France's data protection authority, CNIL, also levied a €50 million fine over alleged breaches of GDPR.

Last month, Germany's Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) also launched an investigation against Google over its alleged use of anti-competitive practices. The regulator said that the investigation would be carried out based on new competition rules which came into effect earlier this year, giving Bundeskartellamt more powers to legislate against big tech firms.