Canada sues Google alleging anti-competitive conduct in advertising

The antitrust watchdog wants Google to merchantability 2 advertisement tech tools and is seeking a punishment arsenic well.

Canada’s Competition Bureau is suing Alphabet’s Google implicit alleged anti-competitive behaviour successful online advertising, the antitrust watchdog has said.

The Competition Bureau, successful a connection connected Thursday, said it had filed an exertion with the Competition Tribunal seeking an bid that, among different things, requires Google to merchantability 2 of its advertisement tech tools. It is besides seeking a punishment from Google to beforehand compliance with Canada’s contention laws, the connection said.

Google said the ailment “ignores the aggravated contention wherever advertisement buyers and sellers person plentifulness of choice, and we look guardant to making our lawsuit successful court”.

“Our advertizing exertion tools assistance websites and apps money their content, and alteration businesses of each sizes to efficaciously scope caller customers,” Dan Taylor, vice president of Global Ads astatine Google, said successful a statement.

The Competition Bureau opened an probe successful 2020 to probe whether the hunt motor elephantine had engaged successful practices that harm contention successful the online advertisements manufacture and expanded the probe to see Google’s advertizing exertion services earlier this year.

The probe recovered that Google is the largest supplier crossed the advertisement tech stack for web advertizing successful Canada, and it “has abused its ascendant presumption done behaviour intended to guarantee that it would support and entrench its marketplace power”, the bureau said connected Thursday.

The lawsuit follows the United States Justice Department’s effort to amusement Google monopolised markets for steadfast advertisement servers and advertiser advertisement networks.

Google has argued that the US Justice Department is ignoring the company’s morganatic concern decisions and that the online advertizing marketplace is robust. The institution besides says the US authorities had cherrypicked a constrictive portion of the online marketplace and did not relationship for assertive competition.

The closing arguments successful the US lawsuit were made connected Monday.

Earlier this year, Google offered to merchantability the advertisement speech to extremity a European Union antitrust investigation, but European publishers rejected the connection arsenic insufficient.