The European Commission has announced that it will fine Google €2.95 billion, or around $3.5 billion, for violating European Union antitrust laws and “distorting competition in the advertising technology industry.” The decision follows a similar ruling from earlier in 2025, where a US federal judge concluded that Google maintains a monopoly in online advertising technology.
Google displays ads in search results, but it also has a dominant position as a software provider for online advertisers and publishers looking to sell ad space and place ads. The Commission’s main issue is with the way Google’s ad buying tools (Google Ads and DV 360) interact with its ad exchange software (AdX) and ad publisher servers (DFP) in seemingly preferential ways. Google appears to favor its AdX ad exchange by “informing AdX in advance of the value of the best bid from competitors which it had to beat to win the auction,” according to the Commission. It also found that “Google Ads was avoiding competing ad exchanges and mainly placing bids on AdX,” maintaining the dominance of Google’s ad exchange even if an alternative is a better option for advertisers.
The Commission is giving Google 60 days to share how it plans to address those issues or face an “appropriate remedy” for violating antitrust law. That could just be the fine, but might also include a forced sale of some or all of Google’s adtech business.
Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s Global Head of Regulatory Affairs, shared that the company will appeal the decision in the following statement provided to Engadget:
“The European Commission’s decision about our ad tech services is wrong and we will appeal. It imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money. There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before.”
$3.5 billion is a staggering amount of money, but it’s not technically the most Google’s been charged for violating EU laws. In 2018, the company was fined $5.04 billion for forcing mobile network operators to pre-install Google apps on phones. Though Google has been under an increasing amount of scrutiny in the last decade for its business practices, it so far hasn’t faced many structural remedies for what has been called anticompetitive behavior.
For example, a US court found Google was a monopolist in online search in 2024, but a judge recently ruled that the company wouldn’t have to sell off Chrome or stop paying Apple to make Google the iPhone’s default search engine. EU regulators have historically been more persistent than their US counterparts, and the European Commission is reportedly investigating Google for at least one other advertising-related issue, but it remains to be seen if there’s any punishment that will actually faze the company.
