This fine brings the company's three year total to just over $9 billion.
The European Commission has fined google €1.49 billion ($1.69 billion) over what it calls "abusive practices in online advertising." That's on top of the $5 billion and $2.4 billion fines it slapped on the search giant in 2018 and 2017. Competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Google "shielded itself from competitive pressure" via exclusive advertising contracts with publishers. Google did this mainly through its AdSense service, which dominated 70 percent of the market in Europe over a 10 year period.
