Federal Court orders Google to turn over documents for Competition Bureau investigation

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CALGARY • A federal court judge has ordered Google to turn over records from its online advertising business for an investigation by the Competition Bureau of Canada.

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The Federal Court of Canada granted the Competition Bureau’s request Friday to force the California-based tech giant to produce records and written information on its display advertising business in Canada.

The bureau said in a release the information is necessary to determine whether or not Google’s practices are “impeding the success of competitors” and “resulting in higher prices, reducing choice and hindering innovation for advertising technology services, and harming advertisers, publishers and consumers.”

The bureau confirmed to the Financial Post last week that it had applied for the order on Oct. 12 as part of an active investigation into Google’s business practices relating to online display ads.

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The current investigation in Canada is focused on whether Google’s practices have harmed online display advertising in Canada “including, but not limited to the market for demand side platform (DSP) services.”

“The bureau’s investigation is ongoing and there is no conclusion of wrongdoing at this time,” the bureau said in a release.

Google sells advertising space online on platforms including YouTube, which is also owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. The company also provides advertising tech services to publishers and advertisers in Canada.

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The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on competition for its display advertising business or its response to the Federal Court’s order.

The bureau’s current investigation differs from a previous investigation in 2016 which focussed on whether Google had engaged in alleged anti-competitive practices relating to its online search, search advertising and display advertising business in Canada.

At that time, the bureau “concluded that there is inadequate evidence to support a conclusion that Google’s conduct … was engaged in for an anti-competitive purpose and/or that the conduct substantially lessened or prevented competition in Canada.”

The bureau said at the time it would “closely follow developments with respect to Google’s ongoing conduct, including the results from investigations of our international counterparts.”

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The scope of the current investigation bears a few commonalities with a similar investigation launched earlier this year in the European Union.

In June, the European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation into “whether Google has violated EU competition rules by favouring its own display advertising technology services in the so called ‘ad tech’ supply chain, to the detriment of competing providers of advertising technology services, advertisers and online publishers.”

In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Attorneys General of 11 U.S. states filed an antitrust suit against Google over “exclusionary practices in the search and search advertising markets to remedy the competitive harms.”

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“Competition in this industry is vitally important, which is why today’s challenge against Google — the gatekeeper of the Internet — for violating antitrust laws is a monumental case both for the department of justice and for the American people,” U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in a release

Google fired back saying the suit would not help American consumers.

“To the contrary, it would artificially prop up lower-quality search alternatives, raise phone prices, and make it harder for people to get the search services they want to use,” Kent Walker, Google’s senior vice-president of global affairs, said in a release at the time.