Google is once again in the crosshairs of the European Union (EU). The European Council of Publishers, a body that encompasses the largest press publishers of the world, presented this Friday a european antitrust complaint against the technology giant, which they accuse of having “anti-competitive conduct & rdquor; and of abusing his power to control the advertising market digital.
Alphabet, the parent company that controls Google, YouTube and Gmail among other services, it obtained in 2020 up to 147,000 million dollars through the online ads, more than any other company in the world and which represents 80% of its income. The absolute dominance of its search engine, which is used by almost 93% of world users, has given Google a privileged position in the advertising market digitalbut it has also unsettled regulators.
Last June the European Commission opened an investigation to determine whether Google favors its own advertising services to the detriment of its competitors. This is the case of press editors, who believe that the American giant has carried out “a barrage of illegal tactics to exclude competition in the advertising technology sector & rdquor ;.
advertising dominance
Google has become an indispensable platform for most users in the world. The activity of those users is collected and their data is transformed into key personalized profiles so that advertisers can segment and personalize their advertising. This model – which is the norm on the Internet – was popularized by Google, which according to press editors gives the company abusive power. In their lawsuit, they point out that Google operates as a “super manager” which acts as a buyer, seller and intermediary of advertising technology.
For its part, Google has said that publishers benefit from its system. “When they decide to use our advertising services, they keep most of the income And every year we pay billions of dollars directly to the publisher partners of our ad network,” a company spokesperson said.
EU regulation
TO Brussels That model worries him too. In addition to the antitrust investigation opened in June, the European Parliament is pressing to limit the use that digital platforms can make of citizens’ data to launch targeted advertising. The Digital Services Act (DSA), which establishes those limitations and sees Google as an arbiter of the market, will be approved in the coming months. In recent years the EU has imposed fines of more than 8,000 million euros in relation to three cases of anti-competitive practices.
Also, in France, Google agreed to pay a fine and reached an agreement in January last year to pay the country’s national and regional newspapers for related rights. A month later, another big media whistleblower in Australia led to the creation of the world’s first legislation forcing tech giants to negotiate retribution for linking their news.
The European Council of Publishers represents large journalistic groups such as the New York Times, those responsible for the British The Guardian and Daily Mail, the German Bild and in Spain Editorial Prensa Ibérica, publisher of this newspaper, as well as Grupo Prisa (El Pais, AS, SER ) or Vocento (ABC, COPE).