As reported earlier, Google violated EU's antitrust laws with their advertisement network AdSense.
During the time of previous reports the size of the fine was not revealed, but now we have proper figures from the European Commission themselves. As reported, this one is the smallest of the three antitrust fines Google has gotten from EU, but is still significant and in the same billion dollar range as the others.
Previously Google has been ruled two fees, 4.34 billion euro ($4.91 billion) for abusing competitive advantage with Android and 2.4 billion euro ($2.72 billion) for preferring Google's price comparison data in their search engine.
Google is set to pay a fine of 1.49 billion euro (approx. $1.69 billion) for requiring advertisers an exclusivity, or "relaxed exclusivity", for search adverts. This happened since 2006 up until 2009, after which Google implemented a less strict but still illegal Premium Placement clauses.
The latter forced websites to still offer Google's AdSense the most profitable spot.
According to EU legislator and regulator, the European Commission, Both of these practices are EU against the Union's antitrust rules.
Written by: Matti Robinson @ 21 Mar 2019 14:26
