Google snubs EU request for self-imposed breakup

BRUSSELS — The European Commission wants Google to break itself up. The U.S. search giant says no.

Google has delivered its formal response to a landmark ad tech antitrust decision by the Commission, rejecting the watchdog’s prescription of an asset sale to address its competition concerns.

The firm submitted a compliance proposal late Wednesday that includes a set of product and technical changes, including some to be rolled out within the year, that aim to open up its ad tech empire to rivals.

The move comes on the final day of the deadline imposed by the Commission on Sept. 5, when it fined the Alphabet unit €2.95 billion for its conduct. 

In its decision, the Commission concluded that Google’s abuse was a product of the “inherent conflict of interest” it has by owning such vast swaths of the infrastructure that powers online advertising.

A spokesperson for the Commission confirmed in a statement that the EU executive had received Google’s proposal, and that it will now analyse the proposed measures.

The search giant has proposed a series of immediate product changes, such as giving publishers greater pricing power, as well as longer-term fixes to increase the interoperability of its ad tech tools.

“Our proposal fully addresses the EC’s decision without a disruptive break-up that would harm the thousands of European publishers and advertisers,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

News publishers on both sides of the Atlantic have long lamented that they face few options other than Google to administer their ad-powered businesses, ultimately forcing up costs for the already struggling sector. 

Those complaints crystallized in the early 2020s, when both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission launched antitrust investigations into Google’s control over the plumbing of online advertising.

When the Commission issued its final decision in September, it made the unprecedented move of stipulating that its concerns could only be resolved if Google ceded control of its market-leading ad tech tools.

The measures proposed to Brussels by Google fall far short of the envisioned structural sell-off that both the Commission and its American counterpart envisioned as a solution to Google’s distortion of competition in the online advertising sector.

They also largely echo the proposals Google submitted to the U.S. federal court overseeing the Trump administration’s ad tech case, where it, too, proposed a mix of behavioural fixes. Closing arguments in the U.S. trial will begin on Monday.

In its statement, the Commission said it would analyze Google’s remedies against a yardstick of whether they end and address the conflicts of interest that Google’s ownership of the sellside, buyside and exchange infrastructure upon which digital ads are priced and placed.

The Commission has never imposed structural remedies and faces a high legal bar for doing so, legal experts have told POLITICO.