Google hit by another EU antitrust complaint over advertising practices
Action by publishers comes as British antitrust regulator says it has agreed to Google's amended assurances that its cookie-killing Privacy Sandbox project will not shut other adtech businesses out of the market
The European Publishers Council (EPC) has filed an antitrust complaint against Google in the EU, alleging that the company is engaged in anticompetitive digital advertising practices that has led to it having a stranglehold over press publishers, and all other businesses in the adtech ecosystem.
The EPC is urging the European Commission to take action against Google and apply remedies to restore effective competition in the ad tech value chain.
The council argues in its complaint that the adtech market has been uncompetitive since Google purchased DoubleClick more than a decade ago.
The EPC Chairman Christian Van Thillo said that Google's behaviour continues to affect Europe's press publishers, advertisers and consumers in the form of higher pricing, less transparency, fewer choices and less innovation.
He added that "the stakes are too high" for the future viability of funding a free press, so European authorities must take measures that actually modify that behaviour.
According to Reuters, Google produced $147 billion in online ad income in 2020, more than any other business in the world.
The latest antitrust complaint by the EPC could bolster the European Commission's ongoing probe into Google's ad services.
Last year, the Commission launched an inquiry to see if Google favours its own online display advertising technology services over those of competitors, advertisers and online publishers.
In a statement to The Hill, a Google spokesperson said publishers benefit from its adtech services.
"When publishers choose to use our advertising services, they keep the majority of revenue and every year we pay out billions of dollars directly to the publishing partners in our ad network," the statement added.
The timing of the EPC complaint is interesting, given that the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced last week that it had agreed to Google's amended assurances that its cookie-killing Privacy Sandbox project will not shut other adtech businesses out of the market.
The CMA is currently looking into Google's plan to disable support for specific cookies in Chrome — dubbed the Privacy Sandbox — because of fears it could stifle competition in digital advertising.
Google has now agreed to submit data to the CMA on its cookie replacement initiative on a regular basis, as well as allowing the regulator to review the major APIs used by the service. It has also pledged to give the CMA two months' notice before ending cookie use.
"We will design, develop and implement Privacy Sandbox with regulatory oversight and input from the CMA and the ICO," Google's William Malcolm and Oliver Bethell said in a blog post.
"We believe that these commitments will ensure that competition continues to thrive while providing flexibility in designing the Privacy Sandbox APIs in a way that will improve peoples' privacy online. Helping businesses adapt to a privacy-safe web, through invention and collaboration, can help provide the foundation for long-term economic sustainability and growth."
Last month, Google presented a new proposal to replace invasive third-party tracking cookies in Chrome, as part of its Privacy Sandbox plan.
The company said the new system - dubbed Topics API - would give users more control over the tracking process, while making them less individually identifiable. It would enable websites to serve ads to users based on their interests, without actually collecting huge amounts of data about them. For the system to work, Chrome will determine which topics best represent a user's internet activity that week, such as 'fitness', 'sports', and 'travel & transportation'. It will store the information from the past three weeks, and delete older data.
The company will launch a developer trial of the technology in Chrome soon, enabling web developers and the ad industry to try it out. The final form of Topics API and how it will work will be decided based on feedback.
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