Google, a division of Alphabet, challenged a possible order from EU antitrust regulators to sell a section of its profitable adtech business, claiming it was unjust to its advertising partners and disproportionate.

Google Vice President for Global Ads Dan Taylor and Director Oliver Bethell made their remarks following the U.S. tech giant’s response to charges the EU had brought against it in June.

“We are opposed to divestment. We don’t think that’s the right outcome for this case. We think this is a tremendously efficient part of our business,” Bethell told reporters.

“And that kind of remedy would be disproportionate in the circumstances and we have explained that to the Commission in our response to their statement of objections,” he said.

According to the European Commission, Google has exploited its market dominance on both sides of the supply chain since 2014 in order to maintain its domination in the online advertising technology sector.

The Commission claims that in order to accomplish this, it made sure that in the corresponding auctions, its own ad exchange, AdX, would benefit from the use of both its buy-side and sell-side intermediation capabilities.

According to Taylor, several competitors in the business provide services to both publishers and marketers.

“There are many firms that have competing adtech businesses with us, Amazon, Microsoft, Criteo, Comcast and others,” he told reporters.

“They offer ad platforms and tools like ours that cater to both advertisers and publishers. Now it is common to do this in the industry because it benefits both advertisers and publishers,” Taylor said.

“Integrated technology stacks will make it easier to provide high quality connections that match the right advertiser to the right ad slot on a publisher page.”

The latest dispute between Google and authorities has greater stakes for the corporation since it affects a chunk of its advertising business, which generated 79% of total revenue last year and is by far its greatest source of income.

$224.5 billion was its total advertising revenue in 2022, which came from YouTube ads, Google Ad Manager, AdMob, AdSense, Gmail, Google Play, and search services.

Before a decision is made, which might happen next year, Google can request a secret hearing to present its case before senior EU and national antitrust officials.

(Adapted from Reuters.com)