Google has paid billions of euros in fines

Back in 2019 Google was fined 1.49 billion euros (1.28bn pounds) by the EU for blocking rival online search advertisers in 2019. In 2018 parent company Alphabet was fined 4.34 billion euros (3.9bn pounds) for using its Android mobile operating system to block rivals.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said: “The practices put in place by Google to favour its own advertising technologies have affected press groups, whose business model is heavily dependent on ad revenues. These are serious practices and they have been rightly sanctioned.”

The investigation began into Google’s practises began in 2019 following a joint complaint from News Corp, French news publishing group Le Figaro and Belgian press group Rossel.

“While we believe we offer valuable services and compete on the merits, we are committed to working proactively with regulators everywhere to make improvements to our products,” said Maria Gomri, legal director, Google France.