Alphabet Inc’s Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) said it will shake up its advertising business practices in the wake of a competition dispute with the French government.
In a deal with France’s competition watchdog, the tech giant agreed to pay a €220mln fine and said it would make changes to its algorithm-based auction processes.
Tech industry commentators believe the landmark case may rebalance power towards the content publishers that host ad placements, albeit as a precedent that may inspire anti-trust action in other jurisdictions.
The claim was specifically focused on the interactions between the Google Ad Manager and Google AdX – the former being the platform that website owners use to auction ad placements and the later being the system through which brands run programmatic ad campaigns.
It is somewhat notable that the case was limited in scope and did not include Google’s dominance in search or Youtube’s position as the primary platform for video.