BRUSSELS -- Europe's antitrust regulators slapped Google with a big fine Wednesday for the third time in less than two years, ordering the tech giant to pay $1.7 billion for freezing out rivals in the online advertising business.
The ruling brings to nearly $10 billion the amount in fines the European Union has imposed against Google. And it underscores the increasing regulatory pressure and political attacks that big tech companies are facing worldwide over not only competition but also privacy infractions, online misinformation, hate speech and other abuses.
The latest penalty involves practices the company says it already has ended, and the sum is just a fraction of the $31 billion in profit its parent, Alphabet, made last year.
The ruling applies to a narrow portion of Google's advertising business: when Google sells ads next to search results on a third-party website. Investigators found that Google inserted exclusivity clauses in its contracts that barred these websites from running similarly placed ads sold by Google's rivals.
As a result, advertisers and website owners "had less choice and likely faced higher prices that would be passed on to consumers," said the EU's competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager.
Anyone who suffered from Google's behavior can seek compensation through national courts, she said.
EU regulators opened their investigation in 2016 -- seven years after Microsoft filed a complaint -- though by that time, Google had already made some changes to give customers more freedom to show competing ads. For that reason, regulators did not require a specific remedy to restore competition.
But Vestager said it appeared rivals haven't been able to catch up, and some are "quite small." By contrast, the EU said, Google has more than 70 percent of the European market for selling ads that run alongside search results on third-party websites.
Google did not say whether it would appeal.
"We've already made a wide range of changes to our products to address the commission's concerns," Google's senior vice president of global affairs, Kent Walker, said in a statement. "Over the next few months, we'll be making further updates to give more visibility to rivals in Europe."
E-marketing analyst Bill Fisher noted a "growing wave of sentiment" toward curbing the influence of big technology companies and said that even if the EU's rulings apply only to Google's European operations, Google should "begin to open up, become more transparent and possibly look to alter some of its business practices" worldwide.
Earlier this month, a British expert panel recommended the government curb the dominance of giants like Facebook, Amazon and Google. In the U.S., Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has proposed breaking up the biggest American tech companies, accusing them of wielding too much power.
This week, as part of a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union and other activists, Facebook agreed to overhaul its ad-targeting systems to help prevent discrimination in housing, credit and employment ads.
The EU has led the way in promoting tougher regulation of big tech companies. Besides cracking down on antitrust breaches by Microsoft and Intel, it has enforced stricter data privacy rules that affect Facebook and other social media companies.
U.S. regulators haven't been as tough, though the Federal Trade Commission recently created a task force focused on anti-competitive behavior in the industry.
Last year, Vestager fined Google a record $5 billion for forcing cellphone makers using the company's Android operating system to install Google search and browser apps.
In 2017, she penalized Google $2.7 billion for manipulating online shopping search results and directing visitors to its comparison-shopping service, Google Shopping, at the expense of its rivals.
Google, which is appealing those two earlier fines, has said it has since made adjustments to its shopping results and will start asking European users of Android phones if they want to use other search or browser apps.
Such pressure on the technology industry is not easing. The EU is expected to adopt new copyright regulations as early as next week that will impose restrictions to stop unlicensed content, such as music and videos, from being shared on tech platforms like Google and Facebook. Another proposal attempts to block the sharing of hate speech and extremist content, a policy that some critics say could lead to censorship.
Vestager's office announced last year that Amazon is under investigation for its treatment of independent sellers who use its website to reach customers.
Apple, which in 2016 was ordered to pay Ireland $14.5 billion in back taxes, is under scrutiny for its App Store policies.
Information for this article was contributed by Kelvin Chan, Raf Casert and Tali Arbel of The Associated Press and by Adam Satariano of The New York Times.
Business on 03/21/2019