BRUSSELS – The EU and Britain today opened an antitrust probe into a 2018 deal between tech giants Google and Facebook owner Meta allegedly aimed at cementing their dominance over the online advertising market.
The European Commission said it was investigating the so-called “Jedi Blue” agreement to see if it had been used to “restrict and distort competition in the already concentrated ad tech market”.
EU competition supremo Margrethe Vestager said if confirmed, the arrangement will have served to distort competition, squeezing rival ad tech companies, publishers “and ultimately consumers.”
The UK’s Competition Market Authority also launched its own investigation into the agreement and the two authorities will “closely cooperate” on the investigation, the EU said.
Chief executive Andrea Coscelli said the CMA “will not shy away from scrutinising the behaviour of big tech firms... working closely with global regulators to get the best outcomes possible.”
The two online advertising behemoths are under intense pressure from publishers and ad rivals as together they overwhelm the online advertising market in much of the world.
The giants faced similar accusations in US lawsuits that Google dismissed as “misleading” and without “credible basis.”
According to the accusations, the “Jedi Blue” deal served to oust competition by manipulating ad auctions – the ultra-sophisticated system that determines which ads appear on web pages based on the anonymised profiles of internet users.
US court documents revealed that the top bosses of Google and Facebook were directly involved in approving the allegedly illegal 2018 deal.
The legal documents filed in a New York court clearly refer to Sundar Pichai, chief of Google’s parent firm Alphabet, as well as Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg and CEO Mark Zuckerberg – even if their names were redacted. – AFP, March 11, 2022
