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Australia wants to limit Google's ad dominance
The comments, in a report published on Tuesday, puts Australia alongside Europe and Britain where regulators want to stop the Alphabet Inc unit trouncing rival advertisers by using the data it collects from people's online searches - including on maps and YouTube - to place marketing material.
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Google Maps. (Shutterstock/BigTunaOnline)
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ustralia's antitrust watchdog called for powers to curb Google's use of internet data to sell targeted ads, joining other regulators in saying the firm dominates the market to the point of hurting publishers, advertisers and consumers.
The comments, in a report published on Tuesday, puts Australia alongside Europe and Britain where regulators want to stop the Alphabet Inc unit trouncing rival advertisers by using the data it collects from people's online searches - including on maps and YouTube - to place marketing material.
The US justice department is meanwhile preparing an anti-monopoly lawsuit accusing Google of using its market muscle to hobble advertising rivals, according to media reports.
"The Europeans and the UK are consulting on such laws at the moment and we're going to be trying to align with them over the next year," Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chair Rod Sims said in a Reuters interview.
"I don't think we're far behind."
Already this year Google said it was poised to withdraw core services from Australia over a law - also recommended by the ACCC - forcing it to pay media companies for content that drives traffic to its search engine. It ultimately inked deals with most major outlets.
A Google spokesman was not immediately available for comment about the advertising action. In a blogpost published shortly before the ACCC report, Google said its advertising technology supported over 15,000 Australian jobs and contributed $2.45 billion a year to Australia's economy annually.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who commissioned the report, said the government would consider its findings and recommendations.
'Better Internet'
While the US justice department would likely use existing competition law against Google, the ACCC said in its 200-page report that Google's dominance of Australian online advertising was so entrenched that existing laws were insufficient to rein in any anticompetitive behaviour.
More than 90 percent of clicks on advertisements that passed through Australia's "ad tech" supply chain went through at least one Google-owned service in 2020, the regulator said.
The ACCC said the US company benefited from vast amounts of internet user data from its search engine, mapping and YouTube video streaming services, and must be made to clarify publicly how it used that information to sell and display advertisements.
It also wants special powers to address the imbalance of advertiser access to consumer data, such as introducing a rule that would stop a company from using data collected by one part of its business to sell targeted advertisements via another part without a rival company getting the same benefit.
Sims said he expected the global push to increase regulation of Google's advertising business would raise the chances of cooperation between the US internet giant and the regulator.
"I just think they can see what's happening and it's in their interests that these rules are aligned (between countries) and it's in their interests that they're really well thought through," he said in the interview.
"We don't want to stifle innovation, we don't want to have any negative effects, we just want to promote competition, reduce entry barriers, so that consumers get a better internet, better transparency about what's going on, and companies aren't paying too much."
Earlier on Monday, Google hit back in court against the EU on Monday as it appealed against a record fine levied by the bloc for monopolistic practices with its Android operating system on mobile devices.
The 4.3 billion euro ($5 billion) penalty, imposed by the European Commission in 2018, was the biggest-ever slapped on the American search engine juggernaut.
The case being heard in the EU's general court is a major test for EU competition supremo Margerthe Vestager, who already lost an appeal by Apple and Ireland over taxes.
Google argues that the EU's accusations over its highly popular operating system are unfounded and falsely blame it for blocking rivals on its search and maps apps on Android phones.
"Android is in truth an exceptional success story of the power of competition in action," Google lawyer Meredith Pickford told a five-judge panel, as quoted by AFP.
Moreover, the company contends that the EU case is unfairly blind to the presence of Apple, which imposes or gives clear preference to its own services such as Safari on iPhones.
