The European Commission has fined Google €2.95 billion ($3.5 billion) for abusing its dominance in the digital advertising technology market and favoring its adtech services over those of its competitors.
Google was also ordered by the EU’s top antitrust regulator to stop anti-competitive and “self-preferencing” practices and take measures to mitigate future conflicts of interest in the adtech market.
Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s Global Head of Regulatory Affairs, told BleepingComputer that the antitrust regulator’s decision was wrong and that the company will appeal it.
“The European Commission’s decision about our ad tech services is wrong and we will appeal. It imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money,” Mulholland said.
This is the fourth time the European Commission has fined Google for abusing its market dominance. In March 2019, the Commission fined Google €1.49 billion ($1.7 billion) for blocking rival advertising companies from displaying search ads on publisher search results pages.
In July 2018, Google was fined €2.42 billion ($2.72 billion) for preventing other companies from competing in the online search and comparison shopping market by abusing its search engine dominance.
One year earlier, in June 2017, the EU’s competition watchdog imposed a record €4.34 billion ($5.04 billion) fine on Google “for illegal practices regarding Android mobile devices to strengthen the dominance of Google’s search engine.”
On Wednesday, the National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL), France’s data protection authority, also fined Google €325 million ($378 million) for displaying ads between Gmail users’ emails without their consent and violating cookie regulations.
chump change for Google 
I feel like they’re fined basically every other day
What is good is that even if they keep acting unlawfully and paying fines, the fines prove that they are wrong. They. Are. Wrong. They are the thugs. The law seemingly prohibits much of their behavior, the problem is enforcement.
The GDPR and other regulations did change the actual practices of big tech in many aspects though. This isn’t only about fines of which they don’t care much.