Google is likely to pay a fine and make changes to its advertising practices, as the company nears settlement in an antitrust case in France.
France’s Competition Authority alleged that DoubleClick for Publishers, the company’s publisher-driven advertising platform, gave Google’s online ad auction house AdX an advantage over other auction houses. The two merged into Google Ad Manager in 2018.
As part of the settlement, Google would improve the “interoperability” of AdX with other auction operators, and would neither accept nor deny culpability. The changes would only be made in France.
A Google spokeswoman said: “Our third-party ad tech products work with both our partners’ and our competitors’ products, including over 700 advertiser platforms and 80 publisher platforms.
“We continue to take in feedback and make updates to better serve users and the wider ecosystem.”