Redazione RHC : 7 September 2025 08:56
The European Commission has fined Google €2.95 billion for abusing its dominant position in the digital advertising market. The regulator said that Google used its influence to promote its own services at the expense of competitors. The European Commission also ordered the company to cease anti-competitive actions and implement mechanisms to reduce the risk of future conflicts of interest.
Google disagrees with the decision and has announced its intention to appeal. Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s global head of regulatory affairs, called the European Commission’s ruling flawed, stressing that the fine was unjustified and that the planned changes would harm thousands of European companies by making it more difficult for them to earn revenue from advertising. According to a Google representative, there are no anti-competitive practices in the management of the services, and there are more alternatives on the market today than ever before.
The investigation has been ongoing since June 2023, when Google received notification of the preliminary findings. At the time, the European Commission declared that the company was violating EU antitrust laws in the advertising technology sector. Google responded by arguing that the regulator’s position was based on a misinterpretation of adtech industry principles.
This fine is the fourth in history the company has received from the European Commission for market abuse. In June 2017, a record fine of €4.34 billion was imposed for illegal practices in the Android ecosystem that strengthened the position of the Google search engine. A new fine of €2.42 billion followed in July 2018 for restricting competition in the online search and product comparison services sector. In March 2019, the Commission fined the company another €1.49 billion for blocking competing advertising agencies from placing search ads on partner resource pages.
On the same day the European Commission announced its new ruling, a further fine was announced in France. The National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties (CNIL) imposed a fine of €325 million. The charges were for placing ads in the Gmail interface without users’ consent and violating the rules on the use of cookies.
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