Google was accused of abusing its dominance over advertising technology to crush competition, as the European Union fired off an antitrust charge sheet that strikes at the heart of the U.S. firm’s sales model and threatens a selloff of the lucrative business.
Margrethe Vestager, the E.U.’s competition commissioner, said the Alphabet Inc. unit had favored its own ad exchange program over its rivals and bolstered the company’s central role in the ad tech supply chain as well as Google’s ability to charge a high fee for its service. Should the commission decide that Google acted illegally it may be forced to divest part its ad sales services, she said at a press conference Wednesday.
“Google is present at almost all levels of the so-called ad tech supply chain,” Vestager said. “Our preliminary concern is that Google may have used its market position to favor its own intermediation services.”
