Google and Meta under investigation by the EU for advertising deals

Google and Meta (the former Facebook ) have already found themselves in uncomfortable situations as regards the American antitrust, with various investigations that have tried to understand if the companies had reached an unfair position towards other companies as regards advertisements and social networks. Europe has also decided to move in this direction, and the objective is however slightly different this time, given that there is talk of an investigation linked specifically to an agreement that would have been between the parties, known as Jedi Blue .

Specifically, there is talk of the possibility that the two giants would have collaborated in order to weaken a specific member of the sector to exclude him from the market, which would therefore lead to online advertising competition to be seriously endangered. The goal is now to investigate the actions of the two companies that have taken place over the last two years in order to understand if a practice of this type has really been carried out.

The pages of Reuters have meanwhile been able to report Google’s statements, which as it was easy to imagine have denied everything, underlining that it was indeed an agreement, but that this was public and not hidden as it seems from the first investigations. , and that this in no way undermined the competition designed to get Facebook users to participate in the Open Bidding of Google advertisements. Meta has provided a similar statement, albeit obviously the word now lies with Europe, which could issue fines of millions of euros to say the least hefty.

It will only remain to see how the investigations will be able to continue and what will ultimately be the outcome of the latter following the work of the investigations by the European Union , always attentive to this type of possibility and ready to avoid anti-competition. in all its forms.

• Facebook, Google defend advertising deal investigated by EU, UK watchdogs (Reuters)