The Competition Authority in France has sanctioned the American internet giant “Google” to the tune of 220 million euros for having promoted its own services in the online advertising sector, she announced on Monday. in a press release.
The fine was decided as part of a transaction procedure with the American giant, said the Competition Authority, which had initially been seized by three press groups, News Corp, Le Figaro and Rossel.
The Authority considers that Google has “abused its dominant position in the market for ad servers for publishers of websites and mobile applications”.
It claims to have found that Google has given preferential treatment to its proprietary technologies offered under the Google Ad Manager brand, both with regard to the operation of the DFP ad server (which allows publishers of sites and applications to sell their advertising space ), and its sales platform SSP AdX (which organizes the auction process allowing publishers to sell their “impressions” or advertising inventories to advertisers) to the detriment of its competitors and publishers, it says.
The practices in question are particularly “serious” because they penalized Google’s competitors in the SSP market and the publishers of mobile sites and applications.
Among these, the press groups – including those who were at the origin of the referral to the Authority – were affected even though their economic model is also strongly weakened by the decline in sales of paper subscriptions and the drop in associated advertising revenue, it should be noted.
The Autorité de la concurrence reminds that a company in a dominant position is subject to a particular responsibility, that of not undermining, by behavior unrelated to competition on the merits, effective and undistorted competition.
“Google, which has not disputed the facts, wished to benefit from the transaction procedure”, notes the press release.
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