Alphabet’s Google took a significant step toward ending a European Union antitrust investigation this year with an offer to sell its AdX advertising platform. But European publishers rejected the offer as insufficient, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Wednesday.
Google’s lucrative ad tech business drew EU scrutiny last year after a complaint from the European Publishers Council. The European Commission subsequently accused Google of favoring its own advertising services, opening its fourth legal case against the world’s most popular search engine.
Google has never before offered to sell an asset in an antitrust case, according to three lawyers involved in the antitrust cases who were not authorized to speak publicly. The company is on trial in the U.S., fighting claims by antitrust authorities that it wants to force Google to sell its Ad Manager product, which includes AdX and Google’s publisher ad server, known as DFP.
