By Sam Schechner 

PARIS -- France's competition authority fined Alphabet Inc.'s Google EUR150 million ($167 million) for unfairly suspending advertisers that placed allegedly deceptive ads, the latest in a series of antitrust probes and decisions against big tech firms in both Europe and the U.S.

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.

"Google has the power of life or death for certain companies that live by these advertisements," said Isabelle de Silva, chairman of France's competition authority, at a press conference to announce the decision. "We don't contest Google's right to impose rules. But the rules must be clear and imposed equally to all advertisers."

Google said it would appeal the ruling in court, adding that it the company stands by its decisions to remove what it called "exploitative and abusive ads" from its platform.

The case stems originally from a four-year-old complaint from Gibmedia, a publisher of weather-forecast websites, which said that Google had unfairly blocked it from buying ads.

Google said Friday that Gibmedia had been running ads for "websites that deceived people into paying for service" and that Google had given up advertising revenue to protect consumers from harm.

The French case comes as big tech companies, including Google and Facebook Inc., face growing antitrust scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the U.S., both the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission, as well as many U.S. states, are probing the companies. Last month, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Makan Delrahim told an antitrust conference that his department is how amassing data can affect market power, including whether amassing data allows companies to improve their systems in ways that creates a "feedback loop that protects market power."

In Europe, the European Union's competition authority, which has issued fines to Google in three cases in recent years, says it is also in the early stages of probes into how Google and Facebook gather and monetize data about their users for advertising purposes.

National authorities are also picking up their interest, too. In a report issued Wednesday, the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority floated several potential ideas for new regulations that could rein in big tech companies -- for instance mandating that Google share usage data from its search engine -- specifically the queries users type in and which results they click on.

"'Big' is not necessarily 'bad,'" the CMA said, but added that it is concerned that Google and Facebook "may have become entrenched with negative consequences for the people and businesses who use these services every day."

In France as well, Ms. de Silva said that her authority has several other cases pending in the tech space, including regarding Facebook Inc., and is in the process of setting up a digital unit to investigate tech cases.

Facebook didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 20, 2019 06:27 ET (11:27 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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