GOOGLE BACK IN EU CROSSHAIRS

Google is back in the European Union's crosshairs, just two years after antitrust regulators wrapped up nearly a decade of investigations with US$9 billion in fines. This time around the European Commission is looking into Google's practices in the “advertising technology value chain,” according to a questionnaire sent to publishers and ad firms seen by Bloomberg News. It says officials are homing in on how the U.S. giant interacts with advertisers, publishers, ad tech firms and rivals. Regulators are also running a separate investigation that cites EU concerns over how “Google is collecting, accessing, processing, using or monetizing data” gathered from tracking the way people behave online, the document says.