Category: Actualités EN

The European Commission indeed recalls that spending on display advertising in the EU amounted « according to estimates, to around 20 billion euros».

In France, the 220 million euro judgment against Google by the Competition Authority in June 2021 for having granted preferential treatment to its own intermediation and advertising auction management services highlights that the share of Google and Facebook’s market in the digital advertising market reached almost 75% for only 30% of the audience, while the audience share of media present on the internet (Le Figaro, Les Echos, TF1, M6, BFM, RTL, France Info, etc.) is 25% for only 10% market share.

Indeed, the media are the collateral victims of the biased competitive system by which Google has captured a dominant share of the digital advertising market, allowing it to use media content, audience and data to capture value in this market and favor its own inventories (advertising space).

Thus, on a French market of approximately 8 billion euros per year, this means that by favoring its own advertising spaces (Youtube, Google Search, etc.), Google manages through its multiple conflicts of interest and its practices of self-preferences to divert a significant share of the digital advertising market to the detriment of traditional media

The 220 million euros sentence against Google by the Competition Authority for having granted preferential treatment to its own intermediation and advertising auction management services highlights that the market share of Google and Facebook on the digital advertising market reached nearly 75% for only 30% of the audience, while the audience share of media present on the internet (Le Figaro, Les Echos, TF1, M6, BFM, RTL, France Info, etc. .) is 25% for only 10% market share.

Indeed, the media are the collateral victims of the biased competitive system by which Google has captured a dominant share of the digital advertising market, allowing it to use media content, audience and data to capture value in this market and favor its own inventories (advertising space).

Thus, in a market of approximately 8 billion euros per year, this means that by favoring its own advertising spaces (Youtube, Google Search, etc.), Google succeeds through its multiple conflicts of interest and its practices of self-preferences to divert a significant share of the digital advertising market to the detriment of traditional media.

It is between 800 million and 1 billion euros that must be redirected from the duopoly (Google and Facebook) to other natural beneficiaries of advertisers’ digital campaigns. The decision of the ADLC is a decisive decision as a first step to allow this rebalancing.

Indeed, the remedies that Google has undertaken to implement will be able to remove the anti-competitive barriers that penalized Google’s competitors in the digital advertising market.

In July 2018, the European Commission fined Google €4.3 billion for abusing its dominant position in the Android operating system by pre-installing Google Search as the default search engine. The Commission forced Google to stop this illegal tying of Android and Google Search by allowing users to choose third-party search engines. In view of Google’s obligation to end the abuse, the OIP condemns the fact that Google now expects its competitors to pay to be findable and selectable by users, because it only exchanges abusive behavior against another and thus continues to deprive consumers of real choice and to distort competition.

The Open Internet Project (OIP) association welcomes the stated desire of Margrethe Vestager, Vice-President of the European Commission and European Commissioner for Competition, to reform European Union competition law, and to make it a “major priority”, and gives him his full support for this ambitious project.

One of the three main lines of work is the use of precautionary measures.

For more than two years, the OIP has been committed to ensuring that precautionary measures are made operational at European level, as they could allow the European Commission to quickly stop abuses of a dominant position, without having to wait several years. the end of the investigation on the merits.

To make these measures operational, they should be able to be imposed in the event of a risk of “immediate damage” to competition, and not of a risk of “irreparable damage”, as provided for in Article 8 of the Regulation ( EC) No. 1/2003 of the Council relating to the implementation of the competition rules provided for in Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty.

The current standard of requirement makes precautionary measures very difficult to apply, and in fact they have hardly ever been applied for 15 years.

The Open Internet Project (OIP) association welcomes the appointment of Mrs. Margrethe Vestager as Vice-President in charge of Digital Affairs and European Commissioner for Competition.

Mrs Vestager has always shown herself to be very involved in the various competition files that the OIP has been able to deal with her, aimed at combating the abuse of a dominant position by the Internet giants, and all the members of the association unanimously salute her determination. and his courage.

The recent announcements by 50 United States prosecutors, instructing the opening of an antitrust investigation against Google, accused of dominating all aspects of advertising and Internet search, give reason for the actions taken by the European Commissioner. They also demonstrate that these have never been “anti-American” but that they are indeed the fruit of a lucid analysis of the need for all consumers to ensure the conditions of free competition and free choice on the Internet.

While the members of the OIP note with regret that various anti-competitive practices by Internet giants persist in Europe, the whole OIP is ready to work closely with Margrethe Vestager over the next five years, in order to restore competition in the European digital market. more healthy and balanced.