EU antitrust regulators might order Alphabet Inc’s Google to sell a part of its advertising-technology business, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Monday.
The EU’s top antitrust watchdog, the European Commission, could issue a formal complaint against Google as early as today, the source said, further intensifying trans-Atlantic efforts to diminish the tech giant’s dominance in digital ads.
Last year, the commission launched an investigation into Google’s sweeping presence at almost all levels of the supply chain for online display advertising, expressing concern about its dominant position.
Photo: AP
Breakup orders from the EU competition enforcer are rare.
However, frustration has been mounting after Google failed to address competition concerns, the source said.
The commission and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Google is the most dominant digital advertising platform in the world with a 28 percent market share of global ad revenue, research firm Insider Intelligence said.
Alphabet’s first-quarter ad sales slipped from a year earlier to US$54.55 billion, but beat what analysts were expecting. The Google parent’s total revenue during the period stood at US$69.79 billion.
Google’s dominance in online advertising has been increasingly questioned over the past few years. Complaints from rivals about its allegedly anticompetitive practices have led to antitrust investigations in multiple continents concerning its practices.
Earlier this year, the US launched an ad-tech lawsuit against Google demanding the sale of its ad manager suite, and had argued that the search giant illegally abused its dominance of online advertising. Google has denied any wrongdoing.
The EU’s likely move was first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday said it plans to resume operations at two coal-fired power generators for three months to boost security of electricity supply as liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply risks are running high due to the Middle East conflict. The two coal-fired power generators are at Mailiao Power Plant in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮). The plant, operated by Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), supplied electricity to Taipower’s power grid until the end of last year. Taipower’s decision came about one month after Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) on March 10 said that the nation had no imminent
Some robotaxi passengers were left stranded in the middle of fast-moving traffic in a major Chinese city after their driverless vehicles stopped running, according to police and media reports on Wednesday. A preliminary investigation indicates more than 100 robotaxis came to a halt because of a “system malfunction,” police in the city of Wuhan said in a statement, without elaborating. No injuries were reported. One passenger told Chinese media that their robotaxi stopped after turning a corner. An instruction on a screen read: “Driving system malfunction. Staff are expected to arrive in 5 minutes.” After no one showed up, the passenger pushed
RSS