In the latest chapter of Alphabet’s mounting European Union antitrust concerns, the Google Maps platform comes under scrutiny from the German competition watchdog and the company agrees to a copyright deal with French news publishers.
On the data protection front, Italian Authorities become the latest to clamp down on Google Analytics.
Read more: Europe New Battleground in Fight Against Platform Monopolies
German Watchdog Launches Google Maps Investigation
On Tuesday (June 21), Germany’s Competition watchdog the Bundeskartellamt opened an investigation into Alphabet concerning the Google Maps platform and how Google’s rules restrict the use of certain Maps features and data.
In a statement, Andreas Mundt, president of the German antitrust authority, said “we have information to suggest that Google may be restricting the combination of its own map services with third-party map services.”
A Google spokesperson said the company was working with regulators and would answer any questions about its business.
The latest investigation comes on the back of a string of announcements by the German watchdog targeting what it perceives as the monopolistic business practices of the Big Tech sector. In addition to parallel antitrust probes into Google’s terms and conditions for data processing and the Google News Showcase, the Bundeskartellamt is also investigating Apple, Amazon and Facebook.
See also: Apple App Tracking Rules Draw German Antitrust Scrutiny
Google Resolves French Copyright Dispute Over Online Content
Away from Google Maps, concerns over anticompetitive business practices are affecting Google’s ad revenue model too.
Alphabet has committed to resolving a copyright dispute in France over online content, the country’s antitrust authority said on Tuesday. “The authority believes that the commitments made by Google have the characteristics to address the competition concerns,” France’s Autorite de la Concurrence said in its ruling.
Publishers have argued that the way Google monetizes excerpts of news content on its search results page breaches copyright laws and deprives publishers of potential ad revenue.
Negotiations can now begin on a remuneration policy that will see Google pay a proportion of its ad revenue to the French media organizations affected. In the three years since the case was opened the company has signed out-of-court deals relating to the ongoing copyright dispute.
According to documents seen last year by Reuters, already has Google agreed to pay $76 million over three years to a group of 121 French news publishers.
Italian Data Protection Authority Latest to Rule Against Google Analytics
To add to its antitrust headaches, EU-wide pressure on website operators to restrain their usage of Google Analytics continue to put pressure on the company.
The Italian data protection authority, the GDPD, has ruled that the use of Google Analytics by Caffeina Media Srl is in breach of the EU’s GDPR legislation.
The issue relates to the way Google Analytics transfers browser data to the U.S. for processing. The authority makes the case that the wholesale export of data including IP address, browser information, OS, screen resolution, language selection, plus the date and time of the site visit, does not offer the necessary level GDPR mandated protection against surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies.
In a statement, the GDPD said it “draws the attention of all Italian managers of websites, public and private, to the illegality of transfers made to the United States through GA.”
The decision follows a similar ruling by the French data protection watchdog, the CNIL, on June 8. The CNIL has issued its own updated guidance cautioning against uses of Google Analytics that would send personal data to the U.S.
Legal issues centered on Google Analytics have been brewing since a 2020 ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that invalidated the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield. Intended as a legal framework for data-sharing between the European Union and the United States, the ECJ struck the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield down over the risk of unlawful access to Europeans’ data by U.S. intelligence agencies.
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