European Commission fines Google €2.95B over abusive ad tech practices

I read this whole article a couple times and don't really u understand what was wrong here.

Google is using their own ad exchange to fill ads? Isn't that... Their entire business model? Does the EU just want more intermediaries to exist? At the end of the day doesn't Google still get to decide how much an ad is worth when someone searches 'car insurance'?

To me this reads like the EU should pass a law describing exactly what they want.

>For example, Google Ads was avoiding competing ad exchanges and mainly placing bids on AdX, thus making it the most attractive ad exchange.

I just don't know why Google couldn't do this. Is this an instance of if they just never used other ad exchanges at all no one would be mad? Like Google getting called a monopoly by requiring the play store to be installed on android phones, while Apple obviously does exactly this just on their own hardware?

From what I quickly gather, these are the things Google did that are against the EU anti-trust rules:

- Companies advertising through Google were not allowed to collaborate with other advertising companies under Google's contract. - Google runs an ad exchange (AdX) where advertisers and advertising spaces can connect, and Google didn't share platform's data with other members, giving them an unfair market advantage. - They also manipulated the way deals were made on the platform to their advantage.

To me it sounds just wrong anyway that Google runs this platform where companies compete with each other but also Google itself, so they'll always have more control.

I think it's a good idea having these anti trust rules, because otherwise you'll eventually get a a gigantic monopoly economy, and I just think that's not a good idea.