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Canada’s antitrust regulator is taking Alphabet Inc.’s Google to court for alleged abuse of dominance in web advertising, adding to a mounting pile of legal challenges for the search giant.
Google illegally tied together advertising tools to maintain market supremacy and used this position to skew ad auctions by preferring its own tools, the Competition Bureau alleges.
The agency said Thursday it applied to the Competition Tribunal, a court-like independent body, for three forms of redress:
1. That Google sells two ad tools – publisher ad server DFP and ad exchange AdX
2. That Google pay a penalty worth three times the value of the benefit it derived, or 3% of global gross revenue if that number can’t be “reasonably determined”
3. For Google to stop anti-competitive practices.
The case comes one week after the US Justice Department and a group of states proposed major changes to Google including a forced sale of its web browser, claiming it had illegally monopolized online search. Mountain View, California-based parent company Alphabet is one of the world’s most valuable companies, with a market capitalization of about $2 trillion.
In an emailed statement, Google’s Vice President of Global Ads Dan Taylor said the Canadian complaint ignores “intense competition where ad buyers and sellers have plenty of choice” and the company will make its case in court.
A similar probe into Google’s ad practices is advancing in the UK.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
