Google is using its dominant position in the advertising market to suppress competition from rivals. The UK is determining this.

According to the British competition authority, Google is abusing its dominant position in the advertising world. The company uses its market position to prevent competition as much as possible. The fine for this can be up to ten percent of the company’s annual global turnover.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) believes that Google has been misbehaving since 2025. For example, Google would use Google Ads to protect its advertising auction platform AdX. It would also use its tools to prevent competition with DoubleClick For Publishers. Google has solutions for the full spectrum of ad management and ad sales and, according to the CMA, enables collaboration that makes competition more difficult.

Adverse consequences

The UK points out that around £1.8 billion was spent on advertising to UK website visitors in 2019. Google’s dominance disrupts competition in the sale of advertising space, which is particularly detrimental to website operators who rely on advertising revenue.

Google can now respond to the CMA’s findings. A similar investigation against Google is underway in the EU, but the results are not yet known. There is a good chance that the European authority will come to similar conclusions.