EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

Prague, Czechia

platform’s adverts. This enabled Google to control the attractivity and reach of their rivals (European Commission [online], 2019b). By the Exclusivity clause, Google consolidate its position while simultaneously preventing other competitors to access the market by prohibiting the clients to list other search ads than Google’s. This, according to the Commission has led to, inter alia , to deterring possible innovations in the advertising technologies and, of course, harmed the consumers in the first place (European Commission [online], 2019a). By the Premium Placement and MinimumGoogle Ads Clause, Google prevented competitors from using “the most prominent and therefore most profitable space on search results” (European Commission [online], 2019a) with the similar effect as already mentioned before. Google’s clients had no other option than to use AdSearch for the most profitable positions in search results and in case they wanted to use only a limited number of search ads, all of them needed to be sourced by Google. Finally, by Authorising Equivalent Ads Clause, clients of Google were obliged to ask Google for direct consent in case they actually wanted to implement any change whatsoever to the “display of competing search ads” (Ibidem, para. 15), having it the same effect as mentioned above (Ibidem, para. 25). Ultimately, in neither of the above listed clauses, Google was not able to prove that it was “objectively justified” nor “that the exclusionary effect was outweigh by advantages in terms of efficiency gains that also benefit consumers” (Ibidem, paras. 17, 21, 26). As a result, Google was fined € 1.49 billion for infringement of Article 102 TFEU and Article 54 of the EEA Agreement. Google has consequently appealed against the Commission’s decision which is now pending before the General Court (Murphy [online], 2019). 3.3 Google advertising More recently, on 22 June 2021, the Commission announced a new investigation against Google’s alleged anticompetitive conduct. Google might have violated the EU competition rules on the ad tech market by giving unallowed advantage to its own advertising technology which could consequently lead to the unfair discrimination of the advertising technology services (the ones who provide the technology used for advertising), advertisers (the ones whose intention is to advertise their goods and services), and publishers (entrepreneurs who are providing their domain / website for the advertisement using technologies of the advertising technology services) (European Commission [online], 2021). Google’s revenues are highly dependent on the so called “surveillance capitalism economy model” meaning that although the services provided by Google might not have monetary value for the users of the internet, Google earns money by

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