The European Union initiates antitrust investigation into Google's advertising division

On Tuesday, the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, launched a fresh inquiry into Google to see if the internet giant has favoured its own online display ad technology services, thereby violating antitrust laws.

The commission will examine Google's constraints on advertisers, publishers, and other third parties' ability to access data about user identification and activity as part of the new investigation.

EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said, "We are concerned that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete in display ad technology.”

The lawsuit is the European Commission's latest move against the search engine behemoth, which has previously been fined eight billion euros ($9 billion) for anti-competitive conduct. However, there was criticism that the fines were ineffective because the corporation could easily afford them.

In March 2019, the EU fined Google 1.49 billion euros for breaking antitrust laws. The Brussels-based organisation claimed at the time that Google had enforced restrictive conditions in contracts with third-party websites, preventing Google's competitors from displaying their search advertising on these sites.

The investigation focuses on a crucial aspect of Google's profit-making machine, which is advertising accounts for more over 80% of the company's income in 2020 or $147 billion.

Services like AdX, Doubleclick or AdSense, which are owned by Google, fuel much of the EU's display advertising industry for web pages and apps, which the commission projected to be worth over 20 billion euros in 2019.

The action signals the official start of a comprehensive investigation of Google's advertising practises, with no specific timeframe for completion. It also adds to a growing number of investigations and fines in the European market in recent years.

The inquiry comes as the EU is developing new legislation to better supervise digital companies by granting them special "gatekeeper" rules that would tighten regulations on how they may operate, although these will take years to implement.