Google settles French antitrust case over ad practices with fine, concessions

• Google (GOOG, GOOGL) has reached a nearly $270M settlement with the French Competition Authority to settle an antitrust probe related to the company's advertising technology.
• The settlement also came with a list of concessions, which are outlined in a Google blog post and include making data equally available to all buyers on its ad bidding platform and no longer limiting Ad Manager publishers from negotiating terms with other sell-side ad platforms.
• "While we believe we offer valuable services and compete on the merits, we are committed to working proactively with regulators everywhere to make improvements to our products. That’s why, as part of an overall resolution of the FCA’s investigation, we have agreed on a set of commitments to make it easier for publishers to make use of data and use our tools with other ad technologies. We will be testing and developing these changes over the coming months before rolling them out more broadly, including some globally," writes Maria Gomri, Legal Director, Google France.
• The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Google was nearing a deal with France's antitrust watchdog.

Comments

[Dawbikes45]

We at GOOGLE DON'T use bidding services for North Americans and those in our trade conglumerant our store is online and their are some other places you can buy items!

[Phil Dumfee]

Just a slap on the cheek. Should fine Facebook 20x that and shut them down.

[SuperPac]

Potentially, this opens a door for other countries to pursue a similar course of action vis-a-vis Big Tech, but more specifically GOOGL. The amount ain't much for the tech oligarchs but it has set limits to their growing political clout in the world. Let's see.