Isabelle de Silva (a French regulator) made headlines on June 7. The French Competition Agency (or FCA) fined Google $260 million after a lengthy investigation that de Silva described as one of the most difficult she had ever been involved in. De Silva found that Google had been using its dominant advertising technology to strengthen its position and outbid its competitors.WIRED UK Original story.But de Silva wasnt finished. In a separate case, de Silva again fined Google a month later. Google failed to agree to copyright changes for its search results with media organisations. Googles punishment? A fine of $594 millionThese sums are nothing compared to Google and Alphabet, its parent company that made $61.9 million in the quarter. Google did not fight the FCA's decision on Google's ad technology. The company accepted all facts presented by the FCA and agreed to make major changes to its operations. These changes will not only be made in France but all over the globe.The Autorit de la Concurrence, a French regulator, was able to change the way Google's advertising technology works in a single judgment. This ruling focuses on technologies in Google's Ad Managera platform that allows companies to buy and sell ads that appear on billions upon billions of websites. Two elements of the Ad Manager system were particularly criticized by the FCA: the DoubleClick for Publishers advertising server and the SSP AdX sales platform. The first lets website owners sell ads while they are publishing content, while the second controls the complicated, split-second auction process.De Silva explains that Google made sure the ad server preferred the platform to sell advertising space. She also explains that Google was making use of its knowledge on the other ad platforms in order to lower its prices. De Silva said that we were able show that Google had information that other platforms did not, due to its dominant position. They also used this information to increase their chances of winning bids.Google was able to use its power to gain an advantage. Companies with a dominant market position in Europe are not allowed to abuse that position under European competition laws. Tech giants can be large, but they should not use their power to gain an advantage over rivals. The FCA ruled that Google's actions caused publishers of websites to lose their advertising space. Google's actions also affected Google's competitors in the advertising technology sector.Three European Commission investigations had previously fined Google over $9.7 billion for anticompetitive behavior. The company is now challenging these penalties in court. Google is not challenging the FCA's ruling in this instance. It actually didn't dispute the FCAs findings and proposed changes to its own advertising technology. It also responded to European Commission cases.This is the first time that tech giants like Google, in particular, have taken such measures to settle a case. Fayrouze MasmiDazi, a partner at Frieh Associs in competition law, said that it was a landmark decision. This is an important decision. It shows that the French competition authority is creative and pragmatic in finding solutions to the problems.Antoine Riquier (commercial litigator at Hausfeld) says that the decision is transparent. The FCA ruling of 101 pages is filled with diagrams that explain how advertising technology bidding works and what servers do. It's full of information, but not too technical. This is an extremely complex task for the French competition authority.
