EU antitrust regulators have broadened the scope of their investigation into Alphabet unit Google’s digital promoting enterprise by taking up the Portuguese competitors watchdog’s probe into the identical concern.
Whereas the European Fee kicked off its investigation in June final yr, the Portuguese Competitors Authority (AdC) solely opened a probe in Could this yr following a grievance.
The Portuguese watchdog mentioned the EU competitors authority took over its case on July 27 in view of the scope and impression of the matter in query.
The Fee mentioned it took observe of the AdC’s announcement. Google didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
AdC mentioned its investigation centered available on the market for writer advert servers and the marketplace for supply-side platforms, which permit publishers to handle the promoting house on their web sites and to promote it by way of auctions or agreements with advertisers.
“There are indicia that Google has used info not accessible by rivals on on-line commercial auctions as a way to change the end result of these auctions in Google’s favour, and has probably restricted the event of competing public sale applied sciences, amongst different competitors proscribing behaviours within the context of negotiations with publishers,” AdC mentioned.
Google made $147 billion in income from on-line adverts in 2020, greater than another firm on the earth, with adverts together with search, YouTube and Gmail accounting for the majority of its general gross sales and income.
