It’s Canada’s turn to take a crack at Google.
As one case against tech giant drew to a close this week in the United States, Canada is gearing up to take on the online behemoth for its alleged anti-competitive conduct with regards to its online advertising technology services. The country’s Competition Bureau has filed an application with the Competition Tribunal that seeks to remedy Google’s conduct for the benefit of Canadians.
This fall, two high profile cases were brought against Google by the U.S. Department of Justice. One was about monopolizing search, and the other sought to show that Google monopolized markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks, and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges, which sit between buyers and sellers. Of the two, the Canadian case is more similar to the latter.
According to the Competition Bureau, its investigation found that, in Canada, “Google is the largest provider across the ad tech stack for web advertising and has abused its dominant position through conduct intended to ensure that it would maintain and entrench its market power.”
Specifically, the Bureau maintains that Google unlawfully tied its various ad tech tools together to maintain its market dominance. It also says Google leveraged its position across ad tech tools to distort auction dynamics by giving its own tools preferential access to ad inventory, taking negative margins in certain circumstances to disadvantage rivals, and dictating the terms on which its own publisher customers could transact with rival ad tech tools.
“The Competition Bureau conducted an extensive investigation that found that Google has abused its dominant position in online advertising in Canada by engaging in conduct that locks market participants into using its own ad tech tools, excluding competitors, and distorting the competitive process,” says Matthew Boswell, commissioner of competition. “Google’s conduct has prevented rivals from being able to compete on the merits of what they have to offer, to the detriment of Canadian advertisers, publishers and consumers. We are taking our case to the Tribunal to stop this conduct and its harmful effects in Canada.”
The Bureau is asking for an order that requires Google to sell off two of its ad tech tools and pay a penalty to promote compliance with the Competition Act. It also is demanding that, in general, Google refrain from anti-competitive practices.
According to the Bureau, it also investigated Google in 2016 for alleged anti-competitive conduct relating to online search, search advertising and display advertising. At that time, the Bureau committed to closely follow developments with respect to Google’s conduct.
The final decision now rests with the Tribunal.