The EU could force Google to break up its ad business

Google seems to be in trouble, as the EU could force the company to break up its ad business. According to a source who talked to Reuters, the European Commission could issue a complaint as early as Wednesday.

The EU could force Google to break up its ad business

Its goal is to diminish Google’s ad tech dominance, basically. Based on the report, this will come as a result of Google’s failure to address competition concerns. It is worth noting that break-up orders from the EU are rare, though, so we’ll see what happens.

So, what exactly does this mean? What will Google have to do in order to appease the EU? If it comes to that, of course. Well, Google could be forced to sell a part of its advertising-technology business, actually. At least according to the source who talked to Reuters.

The European Commission is the EU’s top antitrust watchdog, and the complaint is expected to come from them. The source seems to be convinced it will happen tomorrow, at which point we’ll have far more information.

This is far from being a new issue

This is actually not a new issue, as mentioned earlier. The EU has been pushing Google to address a number of issues, but the company seemingly didn’t do enough, at least based on the EC’s assessment.

Last year, the European Commission launched an investigation into Google’s advertising presence, as it was concerned about the company’s dominance. Google is easily the most dominant digital advertising platform globally, with a 28% market share of global ad revenue. This comes from a first called Insider Intelligence, a research company.

It is worth noting that the US launched an ad tech lawsuit against Google earlier this year. The US demanded a sale of Google’s ad manager suite. In the lawsuit, the US also claimed that Google abused its dominance in online advertising. Google, however, denied such accusations.