Google facing third EU fine over adverts

GOOGLE is expected to face a third fine from European authorities next week following an investigation into its online advertising business.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition commissioner, will issue the US search engine business with a fine over restrictions that Google placed on websites using its Adsense technology.

EU officials have claimed Google “artificially reduced choice and stifled innovation” by restricting competition in the market. Introduced in 2006, the customised Google search boxes can be added into websites to create search engines specifically for those sites, in- cluding adverts displayed alongside search results.

Google, which has already paid nearly €7bn (£6bn) in fines for two other EU cases, previously blocked businesses from also running online adverts from competing advertising businesses. The company changed the restrictions around the tool in 2009 after publishers complained that the search engine stopped them from running other campaigns on their sites.

Google eventually dropped the rules in 2016 after the European Commission sent a Statement of Objection to the Silicon Valley giant. Details of the new fine expected next week were first reported in the Financial Times.

Google is currently appealing against the two fines already issued by the European Commission in the EU General Court in Luxembourg. The company was fined €2.4bn in 2017 over its online shopping search engine tool and the way that it displayed sponsored search results about products by competitors. Last year, Google was fined €4.3bn over the dominance of its Android operating system.

The European Commission is able to issue fines up to 10pc of the revenues of Google’s parent company Alphabet, meaning that Google could in theory be facing a fine of up to $13bn next week. However, the actual amount is expected to be significantly smaller.

With cash reserves of about $102bn last year, Google’s parent company Alphabet is unlikely to struggle to pay the fine. Google declined to comment.