France Fines Google $167 Million Over Advertiser Suspensions

[engine]

France's competition authority has fined Google €150 million ($167 million) for suspending advertisers unfairly, claiming they had placed, allegedly, deceptive ads.

The French authority on Friday said Google abused its dominance of the market for ads displayed in search results by suspending those advertisers in France in a random and unpredictable fashion, imposing significant losses on those sites.

The authority ordered Google to pay a fine and to stop the “brutal and unjustified” suspensions of search advertisers and to clarify its rules for advertisers. The authority also said that Google should have a system to alert advertisers when they risk suspension from its ads system.

[wsj.com...]

[nomis5]

Europe is slowly but surely targeting Google for unfair practices. IMO it will only get worse for G as time moves on. The end game is maybe a few years on, but it is getting closer.

[samwest]

Roughly 1/3 of a days take @ ~$444M/day. Peanuts.

[cnvi]

Pocket change to G.. Such a shame that the USA is more interested in politics than this corrupt monopoly that steals from all sizes of businesses, on such a massive scale - unprecedented in history.

[tangor]

Might be pocket change now ... but if these fines continue, daily, and increase in dollars, there will come a time it makes a bite.

G, on the other hand, could deal more fairly and avoid this in the first place. :)

[mosxu]

France just fired a warning,

They have enough intelligence, all know what is going on but probably will bargain on the tariffs of wine and cheese

[glakes]

Let us not forget that we are the ones that will pay for this fine. Zombies will be sent to our sites, and to click our ads, to cover this and future fines.

[motorhaven]

I wish we could have such topics without Google conspiracy theories and anti-USA rhetoric.

[samwest]

I wish we could have such topics without Google conspiracy theories and anti-USA rhetoric.

And we wish Google would operate their search business under complete transparency...oh wait, they are no longer in the search business.

[mcneely]

they are no longer in the search business.

Google quit the search business on the day they bought DoubleClick ..

[motorhaven]

And we wish Google would operate their search business under complete transparency...oh wait, they are no longer in the search business.

Google does plenty of wrong without having to fabricate stuff, and if you want to justify fabrication rather than facts, that's your call.

[Robert Charlton]

This is about Google dropping deceptive advertisers. It's not about DoubleClick and maintaining "secret sauce" in search.

If Google has largely switched to the advertsing business, which I think may be an exaggeration, then their extra experience on the advertising side of it should make them even more proficient in evaluating the quality of ads.

[cnvi]

Google restrains trade, period. If we aren’t allowed to link exchange with other relevant sites because they claim it’s a scheme, then we are very limited in options that don’t involve spending $.

Google is the biggest crook on the Internet. Class action lawsuit is waiting in the wings when enough lawyers team up with govt support in the US.

[EditorialGuy]

Just another salvo in the digital trade war. First the Gafa (Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon) "digital services tax," now this.

[mosxu]

Problem is no one knows if a real human is clicking on your site or if at all sees your ads or rankings.

[IanTurner]

The problem with Google is that it imposes suspensions and penalties without fully explaining to the penalised party the cause or length of the penalty/suspension - if they were more transparent about this things may be much better for all parties. Giving the penalised party full information about how to proceed in future to avoid penalties would be the way forward in my opinion.

[JorgeV]

Hello-

I do not mean that this is Google's motivation, but, the problem is that, when you are too transparent, you'll have guys (minority) who will abuse the system.

Now, I do not know if this is related, but, it's been a while since I am not longer seeing the "green/blue/red" giant button ads. I wonder if these advertisers have finally be banned ...

[IanTurner]

I understand that being too transparent can be an issue - BUT in the current situation Google is effectively holding kangaroo courts and delivering guilty verdicts without even giving the other party right of reply or indication of the length of sentence imposed.

[PCInk]

I was fortunate.

Banned by Google Shopping, my account closed but I managed to get it opened again.

Why closed? Because when you submit a price of £29.99 on your shopping feed but the price is £29.99 on your site, that is a breach of not one but potentially two rules.

If you support Google, please explain those two rules...

[mosxu]

@PCInk

And after the robots allowed you back in no conversions I guess...

[PCInk]

And after the robots allowed you back in no conversions I guess...

It was the same as it was before the ban. Perhaps because I had to point out how they had got it so badly wrong.

[IanTurner]

I agree that it always best to play as honestly as you can an abide by the Google TOS.

However in this case it appears that the French ruling came down against Google on the grounds that Google was implementing its terms of service in a random and unpredictable manner (I assume AI involvement in this)

I think the lack of transperency on length of suspensions may also have been a contributing factor in the decision.

Interesting if it is an AI related case - could this be the first time a company has been fined for the activity of one of its AIs?

[mosxu]

There is no transparency with regards to personalisation and I can see they claim that it is a secret sauce to do business.

However if you bid as high as you can and a profiled buyer does not see your ad for undisclosed reasons but previous visitors of your site always see your ad is this part of the secret sauce ?