[eMarketer] EU, UK to investigate Google and Meta for ad tech antitrust violation

Antitrust regulators in the EU and UK are investigating Google and Meta’s 2018 “Jedi Blue” deal, which allegedly gave Meta preferential access to Google’s ad bidding system and was used to block ad tech rivals, per The Verge.

The Jedi Blue deal first came under scrutiny when the state of Texas sued Google’s ad business—an effort that 15 state attorneys general are now a part of. But what exactly is Jedi Blue and why are regulators investigating it?

According to eMarketer, the EU has led a global wave of regulation and penalties against Big Tech companies, with search and ad technologies coming under especially severe scrutiny, making this investigation the latest in a series of fines, legal challenges, and penalties that have plagued Big Tech in Europe.

Google in particular has had it rough. There have been so many fines, it’s hard to keep track of all of them. Google alone paid the EU $5 billion in 2018 for anticompetitive bundling, $1.7 billion in 2019 for display ad practices, and recently lost an appeal to overturn a $2.8 billion fine from 2017 that alleges it prioritized its shopping service in search results. To top it off, Google is also facing a $2.5 billion lawsuit from a Swedish company for similar actions.

Meta has also had a tough time, facing fines and a forced sell-off of Giphy, which it acquired for $400 million in 2020. Relations between tech giants and EU regulators have become so tense that Meta has threatened to pull its core apps out of the continent.

Read the full eMarketer article here

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