John Whelan: EU tech fines put Ireland in crosshairs
While the EU's fine is a huge sum, it's pocket change for Google, which earned €77.3bn in revenue in Ireland for 2024. File picture: Sam Boal
The EU, in aggressively implementing its Digital Markets Act, is creating havoc with its US relationship and could derail the new trade agreement, which is at a crucial phase: Finalising the outline deal reached between Donald Trump and Ursula von der Leyen when they met in July at Mr Trump’s golf course in Turnberry, Scotland.
The European Commission announced on Friday that it had fined Google €2.95bn for breaching EU competition rules in the advertising technology market, the latest in a long-running battle with US big tech.
Mr Trump criticised the decision and said that “my administration will NOT allow these discriminatory actions to stand”, declaring that the fine was “effectively taking money that would otherwise go to American investment and jobs”.
He threatened to “start a Section 301”, referring to US trade laws that could impose tariffs and other restrictions on the EU.
This brings Ireland in to the crosshairs, because Google and the other US big tech companies, such as Meta, Apple, and Microsoft, service the EU market from their Irish bases.
While the EU’s fine is a huge sum, it’s pocket change for Google, which earned €77.3bn in Ireland in 2024.
Google already avoided a break-up earlier this week in the US, after a federal judge found it was running an illegal monopoly in online search.
The judge ordered a shake-up of Google’s search engine, but refused the US Department of Justice’s attempt to force a sale of its Chrome browser.
The EU states that the tech giant infringed competition rules enshrined in its Digital Markets Act by favouring its own online display ad-tech services over its competitors’, thus abusing its dominance in the ad-tech market, which was detrimental to other online advertisers and publishers.
The investigation focused on Google platform tools that bring together advertisers (who want to market their products) with online publishers (who want to sell commercial space on their websites).
This is the fourth time Brussels has sanctioned Google with a multi-billion-euro fine in an antitrust case.
In 2017, the commission fined Google €2.42bn for a similar breach of EU antitrust rules by abusing its dominant market position as a search engine.
In addition to the current €2.95bn fine, the EU has ordered Google to stop monopolistic practices. Google has 60 days to inform the commission how it would resolve the antitrust behaviour.
In preliminary findings in June 2023, the commission said Google was forcing customers to use its ad-tech services when purchasing display ads on YouTube (also owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) and favouring its own ad exchange and other ad services.
The Digital Markets Act seeks to ensure fair competition by preventing large digital platforms from monopolising the market.
The EU has identified Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft as ‘gatekeepers’, meaning firms with an entrenched market position.
All these companies conduct much of their services and sales to the EU from their bases here.
US politicians visiting Dublin in early August warned that US tech companies could pull back on the level of business they are doing in Europe, due to frustration at the extent of regulation.
A worry for Ireland is the potential overstep by the commission, which stated its “preliminary view that only the divestment by Google of part of its services would address the situation of inherent conflicts of interest”.
