EU says Google has been abusing its dominance for years and may need to sell part of its business

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Google has been abusing its dominance for years, and may have to sell part of its business as a result, European regulators have said.

Breaking the advertising technology business apart may be the only way to address regulators’ concerns, they said.

The European Union said that Google has been favouring its own advertising technology over those of its competitors, using its dominance over the internet to further entrench that control.

It has been abusing that dominant position since 2014, regulators said.

As such, only selling part of that advertising technology business would be the way to avoid those concerns, it said.

So-called “behavioural remedies” – which force the business to conduct itself in specific ways but without changing the ownership or structure of the company – would not work, regulators warned.

Though Google is probably best known for its search engine, as well as other products such as Android and YouTube, the primary way it earns money from them is through advertising. It both sells advertising space on its own websites and apps, as well as offering a market that allows advertisers and publishers to post their ads.

It runs a host of products aimed at doing the latter. But the EU argues that the central role that it plays in that market has made it able to abuse its platform, allowing it to charge higher fees than competitors, for instance.

The findings are part of a preliminary report that have been published as a “Statement of Objections”. As such, it is focused on potential concerns and does not represent the European Commission’s final findings.

The statement is intended to give Google time to object to any of the findings, ahead of the eventual outcome of the investigations.

The new announcement marks part of an investigation that began in 2021, when EU opened formal proceedings into Google and its possible anticompetitive conduct in the online advertising sector.

As part of such investigations, the EU is able to fine the company up to 10 per cent of its worldwide turnover, as well as imposing rules that would make it stop infringing anti-competition. It can impose any remedies that it thinks would bring that behaviour to an end.