There is no denying that Google dominates the online ad market, and this is something that has landed the company in hot water time and again. Now, European Union is expressing its concerns over how the search engine giant may have breached the antitrust laws and how its ad business should be broken up.

Google’s Ad business in danger as European Union cracks down on the search engine giant

The EU, in a lengthy post, talked about how the company has informed Google of a "preliminary view" where the European Union believes that the company has breached the antitrust rules pertaining to the ad business. The reason behind the EU's concern is that the search engine giant has been found favoring its own ads in the products, which, in return, is detrimental to the competition.

EU claims that one can see this in effect by observing how Google handles its AdX ad exchange. The DFP runs ad selection through AdX, while Google Ads and DV360 are responsible for handing over the buying tools for advertisers that are also running ads through AdX. This practice might seem simple on paper, but it results in other ad exchanges getting zero pieces of the pie and basically asserts Google's dominance even more than before.

EU's post also talked about how a "behavioural remedy" is not going to be enough in this case, and Google will be required to divest and break up its ad business. Which, of course, would allow Google's own advertising products outside the company.

The Commission preliminarily finds that, in this particular case, a behavioural remedy is likely to be ineffective to prevent the risk that Google continues such self-preferencing conducts or engages in new ones. Google is active on both sides of the market with its publisher ad server and with its ad buying tools and holds a dominant position on both ends. Furthermore, it operates the largest ad exchange. This leads to a situation of inherent conflicts of interest for Google. The Commission’s preliminary view is therefore that only the mandatory divestment by Google of part of its services would address its competition concerns.

Now, this does not entirely spell danger for the company. However, one thing that must be kept in mind is that this preliminary viewing is still something that the company should be worried about because this is not the first time they have faced scrutiny over its dominance. The company has to divest its ad business could result in the company taking a massive, massive loss because, based on several reports, it accounts for almost 80% of the business. Since Google Ads are not just stand-alone products and services but can also be found in other services provided by the company.

If this preliminary view does go into the ruling, then we will have to see how it turns out and whether or not there is a middle ground that can be reached with the EU where both parties are happy with the outcome.