Forget the $9 billion of fines that came before. They barely scratched the surface. For Google, this is the big one.
On Tuesday the European Commission announced a formal probe into the search giant’s practices in online advertising. After years of antitrust investigations, this is by a country mile the most important, because it focuses on how Google actually makes most of its money.
Parent company Alphabet Inc. gets 81% of its revenue from online advertising. That amounted to $147 billion last year. In comparison, the earlier investigations into the California-based firm looked at practices that, while important, were merely adjacent to or helped consolidate the dominance of that core business. European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager is now targeting the money spinner itself.