Why is Google obliged to pay 150 million euros to France?

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As reported by Reuters, France’s antitrust regulatory body has fined Google 150 million euros. The investigation opened 4 years ago when the French media company called Gibmedia filed a lawsuit against Google for discontinuing its Google Ads account without warnings.

According to Google, its main goal was to protect consumers. Gibmedia’s account was halted because it was managing advertisements for websites that offered services with shady billing terms.

As per Google’s statement:

“We do not want these kinds of ads on our systems, so we suspended Gibmedia and gave up advertising revenue to protect consumers from harm”

So why impose a fine then? What prompted the authorities to make such a decision if the main motivation was to protect consumers?

In its complaint, Gibmedia stated that Google unfairly imposes its rules and the rules themselves are difficult to understand. During the investigation, authorities have uncovered other cases where Google allowed ads similar to those run by Gibmedia while suspending other Google Ads accounts without a proper explanation. Authorities have also said that Google’s advertising platform rules are inconsistent are applied selectively. Here’s a quote from Isabelle de Silva, the head of the French Competition Authority

“The way the rules are applied give Google a power of life or death over some small businesses that live only on this kind of service”

It is also worth noting that such fines are now happening more often, both in America and Europe. Major tech companies are constantly under pressure by governments and it seems like the main goal is to demystify the complicated operations and inner working of these large tech businesses.

What do you make of that? I encourage you to do your own reading, form your own opinion and to let us know what you think down in the comments

Please check out the references down below, as well as contextual hyperlinks in the article itself.

Peace ✌?

 

 

Sources:

Reuters

MSN

One thought on “Why is Google obliged to pay 150 million euros to France?

  1. Padalka Andrii says:

    I do not know anything about this news. Amazing!

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