The European Commission fined Google €1.49 billion ($1.69 billion) for abuse of a dominant position in the online advertising market. This was announced by the EU Commissioner for competition, Margrethe Vestager.
According to the European Commission, since 2006, Google at the conclusion of contracts with third-party sites forbade them advertising of competitors of the search engine in their search results. The corresponding investigation began in 2016.
“All violations are recorded in the contractual obligations that Google imposed on its partners – the owners of websites”,-said Vestager.
The European Commission has accused the Internet company of” cementing the dominant position in the European market”, as well as preventing free competition in the search and advertising on the Internet.
Since 2017, the Corporation has already received two fines from the European regulator: €2.42 billion for abuse in the market of search engines and €4.3 billion for restrictions on the pre-installation of applications on smartphones with the Android operating system.
