BRUSSELS (Reuters) – EU antitrust regulators have sought info from advertisers concerning Google’s promoting know-how practices, a European Fee doc seen by Reuters exhibits.
Alphabet-owned Google, the world’s largest on-line search engine, has been hit with fines totalling 8.25 billion euros ($10 billion) within the final three years for blocking rivals in on-line procuring, Android smartphones and internet advertising.
It now faces two European Union investigations into its promoting practices, centered on know-how and information.
Google and Fb collectively seize over half of the web advert gross sales market globally. Each firms are presently the goal of a U.S. lawsuit over their 2018 deal which supplies Fb’s advertiser shoppers the choice to put adverts inside Google’s community of publishing companions
Google mentioned it was cooperating with the Fee, whose 13-page questionnaire despatched to advertisers this month requested in regards to the affect of utilizing the default setting ‘Embody Google Show Community’ launched in 2018 for search campaigns on Google Advertisements.
“We compete with many others within the trade and provides individuals granular controls over how their info is used to personalize adverts and restrict the sharing of non-public information to safeguard individuals’s privateness,” a Google spokeswoman mentioned.
The Fee mentioned the questionnaires are a part of its investigation into Google’s information utilization.
“This investigation covers all companies of Google, together with digital promoting and the advert tech chain,” the EU competitors enforcer mentioned on Wednesday.
The EU additionally needs to know if advertisers obtain rebates after they use Google intermediaries which permit advertisers or media companies to purchase promoting stock from many sources.
The questionnaire additionally asks whether or not the power to entry Google’s YouTube is tied to the number of an middleman.
It requested if Google’s integration in 2018 of its on-line advert supply unit DoubleClick impacted advertisers in addition to any imminent affect from its plan to part out third-party cookies on the Chrome browser by the tip of 2022.
Advertisers have till Friday to answer to the questionnaire, which was first reported on by Politico.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Modifying by Alexander Smith)
Copyright 2021 Thomson Reuters.
