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The Italian Antitrust Authority starts investion against Google for abuse of dominant position

On 28 October 2020, the Italian Antitrust Authority launched an investigation against Google for violation of art. 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The alleged anti-competitive practice is abuse of a dominant position, allegedly held by the company, controlled by Alphabet Inc, with regard to the availability and use of data for the processing of display advertising campaigns. 
Google is accused of discriminatory use of the enormous amount of data collected, with the consequence of having prevented its competitors from being able to fairly compete. Allegedly, the distortion on the digital advertising market has been caused, on the one hand, by Google’s refusal to provide the Google ID decryption keys and by excluding third-party tracking pixels and, on the other hand, by having used tracers that allow the advertising intermediate services to reach a targeting capacity that some equally efficient competitors are not able to replicate.
In numbers, online advertising sales in Italy recorded a value of over 3.3 billion euros in 2019 alone, currently representing 22% of the resources of the media sector, while display advertising alone has a turnover of over 1,2 billion euros. In terms of value, online advertising is the second largest source of revenue for the media sector.
In addition to cookies inserted together with banners, pop-ups or other forms of advertising messages visible during the consultation of a website, Google has multiple tools that enable reconstruct in a detailed manner the profile of the subjects to which advertising messages should be directed. Such tools are the Android mobile operating system, installed on most smartphones used in Italy, the browser for Chrome mobile devices, for mobile search, the browser for Chrome personal computers, the cartography and navigation services Google Maps / Waze and of all other services provided through Google ID (gmail, drive, docs, sheet, Youtube).
The anti-competitive conducts that are being investigated by the Italian Antitrust Authority seem to have a significant impact on competition on the digital advertising market with extensive repercussions on competitors and consumers. The absence of competition in the intermediate services of digital advertising could practically reduce the resources allocated to website producers and publishers, thus impoverishing the quality of content directed to final consumers. Furthermore, the absence of effective competition based on merit could discourage technological innovation for the development of less invasive technologies and advertising techniques for consumers.