Canada sues Google alleging anti-competitive behavior in advertising | Business and Economic Affairs

The antitrust watchdog wants Google to sell two ad technology tools and is seeking fines.

Canada’s Competition Bureau has sued Alphabet’s Google for anti-competitive behavior in online advertising, the antitrust watchdog said.

The Competition Bureau, in a statement on Thursday, said it has filed an application with the Competition Tribunal seeking an order to, among other things, require Google to sell two of its advertising technology tools. It is also seeking a fine from Google to encourage compliance with Canadian competition laws, the statement said.

Google said the complaint “ignores intense competition where ad buyers and sellers have many choices, and we look forward to taking our case to court”.

“Our advertising technology tools help websites and apps promote their content, and enable businesses of all sizes to reach new customers more effectively,” said Dan Taylor, vice president of Global Ads at Google, in a statement.

The Competition Bureau opened an investigation in 2020 to investigate whether the search engine giant had engaged in anticompetitive practices in the online advertising industry and expanded the investigation to include Google’s advertising technology services earlier this year.

The investigation found that Google is the largest provider of all web advertising technology stacks in Canada, and “abused its position through conduct intended to ensure that it will maintain and consolidate its market power”, the office said on Thursday.

The case follows an effort by the United States Department of Justice to show Google’s market share of ad servers for publishers and advertiser networks.

Google has argued that the US Department of Justice is ignoring the company’s legitimate business decisions and that the online advertising market is tight. The company also claims that the US government chose a small slice of the online market and did not face fierce competition.

Closing arguments in the US case were made on Monday.

Earlier this year, Google offered to sell ad exchanges to end the European Union’s antitrust investigation, but European publishers rejected the proposal as insufficient.