Alphabet and its subsidiary, Google, have less and less to fear that the executive body of the European Union will impose structural changes on them in the antitrust proceedings that are investigating the company’s dominance in the online advertising market, writes the Reuters.
However, at the beginning of the investigation, the competent EU Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, did not at all rule out the possibility of dismemberment used as a last resort in the case of seriously infringing companies, when in the end a company is required to sell some of its divisions or separate them from the parent company in some other way.
By the way, there has been no precedent for such a provision in EU competition law until now, but at the same time, the new legal framework regulating digital markets (Digital Markets Act – DMA) and digital services (Digital Services Act – DSA), which entered into force this year and last year, also takes into account the structural changes in the last case with the possibility of prescribing.
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According to Reuters sources, the Commission may make a decision closing the investigation in the coming months, but the decision-makers ultimately rejected the decision to break up Google due to the complexity of the process, so it is expected that in addition to requiring the termination of illegal behavior, the company may be fined further, which in the past was sanctioned for 8.25 billion euros in a decade due to its anti-competitive activities in various cases.
The EU’s executive body launched a competition law investigation against Google in June 2021, based on the fact that Google is represented on practically all levels of the display advertising market, i.e. it collects data for advertising purposes (trackers), sells advertising spaces directly, and also acts as an advertising intermediary. and with this, overall, it was in a monopoly position in the segment.
For Google, the advertising business generated almost $238 billion in sales last year, which was 77% of the company’s total annual revenue.
Incidentally, the case does not only have a European thread, the United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Google just last week, objecting to the same practice. One of the outcomes of the overseas case could also be dismemberment, and in the US, the judge has already established Google’s monopoly in the segment of online search services, and the court will decide on the compensation requirements (which can also be a structural transformation) at a later stage.
Source: www.hwsw.hu
