France Fined Google 150 million Euros
France’s competition authority fined Google 150 million euros ($167 million) for anti-competitive behavior and for having unclear advertising on the Google Ads page.
"Google has abused its dominant position in the search advertising market by adopting opaque and difficult to understand operating rules for its Google Ads advertising platform and applying them unfairly and randomly," the French Competition Authority said.
The authority demands Google to clarify the operating rules of Google Ads and to properly obtain users' consent for personalized ads. Google should also clarify the procedures it follows when it suspends accounts, and set up procedures for alerting, prevention, detection and treatment of breaches of its Ad rules.
Google said it would appeal the fine.
Other European countries maintain high levels of scrutiny on major U.S. tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon, which are often criticized for having relatively low tax payments.
In September, Google agreed to pay close to 1 billion euros to French authorities to settle a fiscal fraud probe that began four years ago.
Google has also faced growing regulatory scrutiny about the content it promotes in search results and ads.
In January, France’s data protection watchdog had fined Google 50 million euros for breaching European Union online privacy rules.