The European Union's powerful anti-trust regulator on Wednesday fined tech giant Google 1.49 billion euro for antitrust violations in the online advertising market. The regulator said Google had violated antitrust rules by imposing unfair terms on companies that used its search bar on their websites in Europe.
"Today the commission has fined Google 1.49 billion euro (USD 1.69 billion) for illegal misuse of its dominant position in the market for the brokering of online search adverts," EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said.
The fine is the third against Google by the EU since 2017, reinforcing Europe's position as the world’s most aggressive watchdog of the online industry with an increasingly powerful role in society and the global economy.
Google was fined a record 4.3 billion euro in 2018 for abusing its ownership of the Android mobile operating system to unfairly undercut rivals in the mobile phone market. In 2017, the company was slapped a fine of 2.4 billion euro for manipulating shopping search results. Google is currently appealing both cases.
With Wednesday's new penalty, Google’s total EU antitrust bill now stands at 8.2 billion ($9.3 billion).
