Google Offers EU Ad Remedies

What happened

Google proposed remedies to the European Commission following a €2.95 billion antitrust fine concerning its ad tech business. The company introduced functionality allowing publishers to set varied minimum prices for distinct bidders within Google Ad Manager. Additionally, Google committed to enhancing interoperability between its proprietary tools and those of other businesses, aiming to provide increased choice for publishers and advertisers. These changes address concerns regarding Google's prior favouring of its own services.

Why it matters

These proposed remedies introduce a new operational constraint for Google's ad tech ecosystem by decentralising minimum price controls from a unified system to publisher-defined parameters. This shifts the burden of managing diverse bidding strategies and ensuring competitive fairness onto publishers and potentially increases the due diligence requirements for platform operators integrating third-party ad tools. The enhanced interoperability also creates a visibility gap regarding the full scope of data flow and interaction points between Google's services and external platforms.