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Google Faces EU Break-Up Order Over Anti-Competitive Adtech Practices (reuters.com) 51

Alphabet's Google may have to sell part of its lucrative adtech business to address concerns about anti-competitive practices, EU regulators said on Wednesday, threatening the company with its harshest regulatory penalty to date. From a report: The European Commission set out its charges in a statement of objections to Google two years after opening an investigation into behaviours such as favouring its own advertising services, which could also lead to a fine of as much as 10% of Google's annual global turnover. The stakes are higher for Google in this latest clash with regulators as it concerns the company's biggest money maker, with the adtech business accounting for 79% of total revenue last year.

Its 2022 advertising revenue, including from search services, Gmail, Google Play, Google Maps, YouTube adverts, Google Ad Manager, AdMob and AdSense, amounted to $224.5 billion. EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said Google may have to sell part of its adtech business because a behavioural remedy is unlikely to be effective at stopping the anti-competitive practices.

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Google Faces EU Break-Up Order Over Anti-Competitive Adtech Practices

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  • by MitchDev ( 2526834 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @11:27AM (#63602166)

    Tell them NO and block the EU....

    • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @11:28AM (#63602172) Homepage
      Don't threaten us with a good time.
    • Oh no, who will serve up shitty search results?

    • Tell them NO and block the EU....

      I hope they do that. Not because I want Google gone but rather because Sundar Pichai is a horrible CEO and I would enjoy watching the shareholders and investors hang draw and quarter him before replacing him with someone marginally less horrible.

    • Would be a gift to EU economy but won't happen unfortunately.
    • by ranton ( 36917 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @01:05PM (#63602596)

      Tell them NO and block the EU....

      Lol, EMEA makes up 29% of Google's total revenue. Do you honestly think Google is going to give that up? EU residents will barely notice if they start using Bing. Google has almost no leverage here. Their best bet is lobbying the US government to fight the EU based on trade treaties.

    • They would probably lose less money that way.

    • then watch your merkin shareholders howl \ take legal action cos your are leaving a dollar on the table,
    • OH PLEASE USA , remove yourself from the 96% of the worlds population who are not in the USA.

      Make the EU great again
      Make Asia great again
      Make Africa great again

      US laws stop at the US boarder. When people do business or visit the USA, US laws apply to them.
      Well the revers is true too, when US citizens and businesses are in other parts of the world, local laws apply
      We don't need US Karens here.
    • I don't think Google will give up the EU revenue. But Google will not give up 295 Billion dollars a year in search revenue either.

      They have been preparing for this for years.

      Google will split search and advertising into separate companies -under the Alphabet umbrella. Alphabet shareholders will still own the most successful search engine company, and the most successful online advertising business.

      They wont directly share data between the corporations, but they don't need to. They have already been worki

  • Create something of your own to compete with Google, ya farking wankers.

    • Or, just hear me out. Google follows the laws in the markets they serve? I know that's a tall order for companies based in the USA but give it a shot.

    • Create something of your own to compete with Google, ya farking wankers.

      Let's see you create something to compete with a mega monopoly.

      • by KlomDark ( 6370 )
        With all the people and money in the EU, why are conditions not right for them to do it themselves.

        BTW, my site is older than Facebook or Twitter: MessageBase.net [messagebase.net]
        • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          You mean the gov't or EU biz? If competing with Google were easy, Bing would have done it by now: they have very deep pockets, but just don't have Google's network effect working for them: you need a big audience in order to have the ad revenue to "buy" a big audience.

        • by higuita ( 129722 )

          there are huge companies in europe, but unlike the USA (where you have the states, but everything is better integrated), EU is really a group of countries, different legal systems, tax, markets, languages and investors. This will change with time probaably, but due the amount of different cultures and countries, will take centuries to reach the USA integration level.

          So any startup have higher difficulties to grow than in the USA. Europe companies are also less aggressive, nokia, arm, bayer, etc aren't set t

          • by KlomDark ( 6370 )
            Good answer, sounds like EU has a problem that shouldn't be solved by sucking the blood from other countries then.
        • With all the people and money in the EU, why are conditions not right for them to do it themselves.

          The conditions are not right because ... wait for it ... an monopoly exists in the space.

    • by higuita ( 129722 )

      yes, just all other US based companies are able to compete with google... so many:

      apple, in the small browser and phone OS businesses
      facebook^Wmeta in the small social network and tracking^Wads businesses
      Microsoft in the small OS market, cloud and (finally, after many years thanks to chat-gpt) search engine businesses
      amazon in the small cloud businesses

      what else is missing? notice that all those are huge also have their own monopoly and pour tons of money on it and in the end they not really competing (exc

      • by KlomDark ( 6370 )
        " like in the MS case over the OS, browser and office dominance" I'd argue on OS and Browser. Linux is eating their OS market share, and Google's Chrome has destroyed their Browser dominance. (Modern MS Edge is just reskinned Chrome). EU (At least Germany) is actually doing something to compete with Office, with Nextcloud's Office stuff. It's been getting really really good as far as multi-person document editing. That's all I use in my home, but unfortunately not at work. MS Office's multi-person editing
  • Actual content (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zak3056 ( 69287 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @11:46AM (#63602256) Journal

    If anyone wants to read the actual complaint from the EU, which the story utterly lacks, they can find it here [cloudfront.net].

    TL;DR: In advertising "auctions" Google's ad publisher is communicating to its ad exchange the necessary bid to win the auction over its competitors.

    • Google's ad publisher is communicating to its ad exchange the necessary bid to win the auction over its competitors.

      "Don't be evil."

  • They're leveraging their monopoly on the desktop OS market to push various applications on others. Competing OS' simply have no chance on the desktop, especially not on the corporate desktop.

    Need Office? Shame, bound to Windows!
    Need DirectX? Shame, bound to Windows!
    Their browser is not successful as the competition? Simply sabotage the competition!
    Their desktop conferencing application is not as successful as the competition? Include it in Windows!
    No hardware drivers for your particular OS? There are for Wi

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