France fines Google over advertiser suspensions on Google Ads

The Autorité de la Concurrence, the French competition watchdog, this month fined Google for abuse of dominant position in the search advertising market.

The Autorité de la concurrence says Google abused its dominant position by adopting opaque and difficult to understand rules for the operation of its advertising platform Google Ads.

The Autorité de la Concurrence imposes a penalty of EUR 150 million and Google has now to clarify the wording of the operating rules of Google Ads and the procedure for suspending accounts.

According to the decision, withing 2 months, Google also has to report the measures it intends to implement to comply with the injunctions, and for a perior of one week, a summary of the decision should be accessible via the Google.fr home page and the version of Google.com accessible in France.

Within 6 months, Google should do a report detailing all the measures and procedures that it has actually put in place.

The investigation from the Autorité de la Concurrence started with a complain from Gibmedia, a publishing company that was suspended without notice from Google Ads.

The Autorité de la Concurrence found that Google was not consistent applying their policies and the rules are opaque leaving it to Google to interpret and modify them at its own discretion.

Google has now to clarify the wording of the Rules of its advertising platform Google Ads and to review the procedures for informing about changes to the Rules.

Google also has to provide the French authority with a report specifying, in particular, the number of complaints filed against it by French Internet users, the number of suspended sites and accounts, the nature of the Rules violated and the terms of the suspension.