BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission warned Google on Wednesday of anti-competitive practices in the context of its digital advertising activities, and could force the digital giant to sell part of its services.

The Commission finds that Google, which is part of the Alphabet group, favors its own online advertising services over competing suppliers, advertisers and online publishers.

According to Brussels, Google has a dominant position in the markets for ad servers, publishers and programmatic ad buying tools.

The commission finds that the company is abusing this position, for example, by having its publisher Google Ads primarily place its ads on AdX, its own ad exchange, “making the latter the most attractive ad exchange” .

Last year, the adtech business, which touches on advertising technologies, was Google’s main source of income and accounted for 79% of its total revenue.

In 2022, its advertising revenue, including from search services, Gmail, Google Play, Google Maps, YouTube ads, Google Ad Manager, AdMob and AdSense, amounted to 224.5 billion dollars (207.4 billion euros).

The European Commission detailed its accusations in a statement of objections published two years after it opened an investigation.

EU competition policy chief Margrethe Vestager says Google may have to sell off some of its adtech business, saying a change in behavior is unlikely to end the practices anti-competitive.

Google had sought to settle the case three months after the investigation was launched, but regulators have been frustrated by the slow process, a person with knowledge of the matter previously told Reuters.

(Report Foo Yun Chee, with the contribution of Sudip Kar-Gupta; Victor Goury-Laffont, edited by Kate Entringer)

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