Google ad tech monopoly: Canada accuses Google of creating an adtech monopoly

Canada’s competition authority on Thursday accused Google of abusing its tools for buying and selling online advertising to create a monopoly, and filed a complaint seeking to force the company to sell two of its main advertising technology services.

In a statement, Canada’s Bureau of Competition Policy, a law enforcement agency, charged that Google has used its position as the largest provider of software for buying and selling ads, its marketplace for ad auctions and its services for showcasing the ads to illegally dominate the sector.

The company’s conduct, it said, ensured that the Alphabet-owned Google “would maintain and entrench its market power,” adding that it “locks market participants into using its own ad tech tools” and “prevents rivals from being able to compete on the merits of their offering.”

In addition to asking the Competition Tribunal of Canada, a quasi-judicial body, to force Google to sell two of its ad technology services, the bureau will ask to fine the company as much as 3% of its worldwide revenues, which totalled more than $305 billion last year. (Google’s ad tech services generated about $31 billion in revenues last year worldwide.) It also wants the tribunal to order Google not to engage in anti-competitive conduct and practices.

Google rejected the Canadian bureau’s charges.

The case “ignores the intense competition where ad buyers and sellers have plenty of choice and we look forward to making our case in court,” Dan Taylor, the vice president of global ads for Google, said in a statement.

Google owns four of the largest online advertising tech services in Canada and controls 40% to 90% of their market, the bureau said. They are involved in about 200 billion online ad sales each year in the country, the bureau indicated. Google has created many of those services by buying other companies that developed them.