It’s the latest in a series of legal challenges the Alphabet-owned company faces over its dominance in the ad tech space.

Canada’s Competition Bureau is taking legal action against Google for alleged anti-competitive behavior in its online ad technology services in the country.

Following an investigation, the Bureau announced yesterday (November 28) that it had filed an application with the Competition Tribunal which “seeks to remedy conduct in the interest of Canadians”.

“The Competition Bureau conducted an in-depth investigation that found that Google had abused its dominant position in online advertising in Canada by engaging in behavior that forced market participants to use its own ad technology tools, thereby excluding competitors and distorting the competitive process,” said Matthew Boswell. Canadian Commissioner of Competition.

Boswell alleged that Google’s conduct has prevented its competitors “from being able to compete on the merits of what they have to offer, to the detriment of Canadian advertisers, publishers and consumers.”

Canada opened an investigation in 2020 into whether the search giant is exploiting its market power in the provision of video advertising in the advertiser buying tools market. In 2021, she obtained a court order to move the investigation forward. Earlier this year, it expanded the scope of the investigation to determine whether Google exploits its market power in display technology services in a way that harms competition and whether it uses predatory pricing for some of these services.

In its latest filing, the Bureau alleged that Google illegally linked its various adtech tools to maintain its market dominance and exploited its position in these adtech tools to distort auction dynamics. To do this, the Bureau claims, it gave its own tools preferential access to advertising inventory, taking negative margins in certain circumstances to disadvantage its competitors and dictating the conditions under which its own publisher clients could carry out advertising. transactions with competing adtech tools.

As a remedy, the Bureau wants Google to sell two of its adtech tools, pay a penalty and prohibit it from continuing to engage in anticompetitive practices.

This development is the latest in a series of legal issues Google is currently facing for its adtech practices.

In September, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) provisionally ruled that Google’s actions as a dominant player in the ad tech sector were harm advertisers and publishers and may have infringed competition law. This comes from the fact that CMA investigation into Google adtech offices opening in 2022.

Last year, the EU opened a Google investigation and alleged that the tech giant violated EU antitrust laws by attempting to influence its market position in the ad tech sector. This isn’t the first time the EU has marked Google’s adtech map – in 2019 it Google was fined 1.49 billion euros for abusing its market position.

In the United States, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is pushing for the software giant disengage from your Chrome and Android activities in order to remedy its illegal monopoly on Internet search.

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