Google offers ad tech changes to settle €3 bn EU antitrust order

Google has offered to tweak its ad tech products to settle a European Union order after a near-€3 billion ($3.4 billion) antitrust penalty, stopping short of a partial breakup watchdogs favor.   

The Alphabet Inc. unit said in a blog post Friday it would give publishers options to set different minimum prices for bidders on Google’s Ad Manager platform, as well as boost interoperability across its ad tech services to give publishers and advertisers more choice and flexibility.        

Despite the offer, the company said it still disagrees with the European Commission’s September decision and plans to appeal. EU antitrust watchdogs said at the time that Google had abused its dominance by giving its own ad exchanges a competitive advantage and must bring the practices to an end.   

 

After doling out the penalty and demanding fixes to antitrust violations, EU competition chief Teresa Ribera hinted that the only way to level the playing field would be for Google to divest unspecified “parts” of its ad tech arm. While it falls short of ambitions for a more radical breakup urged by predecessor Margrethe Vestager, Ribera’s solution is still seen by Google as a step too far. 

The €2.95 billion penalty ranks among Brussels’ toughest sanctions and is the second-highest by the EU against Google for alleged abuses of dominance. It follows a €4.13 billion Android penalty and a €2.42 billion fine for crushing shopping search rivals. A €1.49 billion AdSense levy was annulled last year. 

The Mountain View, California-based company is number one in the $757.5 billion global digital ad market, according to 2025 estimates by research firm EMarketer. Google is expected to pull in $205.04 billion in digital ad revenue in 2025. Most of that — $171.72 billion — comes from Google’s global search advertising business. The remaining $33.33 billion is from display ads.