The comments, in a report published Tuesday, set up another
possible showdown between Australia and Google months after the Alphabet unit
vowed to pull core services from the country over a new content licensing law.
It may also spur along an anti-monopoly lawsuit reportedly
being prepared by the US justice department accusing Google of using its market
muscle to hobble advertising rivals. European regulators are also scrutinising
Google's advertising business.
In its "ad tech" report, which still must be
considered by the government, the Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission (ACCC) said Google's dominance of online advertising was so
entrenched that existing laws were insufficient to rein in any anticompetitive
behaviour.
More than 90 percent of clicks on advertisements that passed
through Australia's "ad tech" supply chain went through at least one
Google-owned service in 2020, the regulator said.
"Google has used its vertically integrated position to
operate its ad tech services in a way that has, over time, led to a less
competitive ad tech industry," ACCC Chair Rod Sims said in a statement.
"This conduct has helped Google to establish and
entrench its dominant position in the ad tech supply chain. We recommend rules
be considered to manage conflicts of interest, prevent anti-competitive
self-preferencing, and ensure rival advertisement tech providers can compete on
their merits."
A Google spokesman was not immediately available for
comment. In a blog post published shortly before the ACCC report, Google said
its advertising technology supported over 15,000 Australian jobs and
contributed $2.45 billion a year to Australia's economy annually.
The ACCC said the US company benefited from vast amounts of
Internet user data from its search engine, mapping and YouTube video streaming
services, and must be more transparent about the way it uses this information
to sell advertisements.
The regulator said it wanted special powers to address the
imbalance of advertiser access to consumer data, such as rules stopping a
company from using data collected by one service - such as mapping - to sell
targeted advertisements without a rival company getting the same benefit.
It said it also wanted Google to be made to clarify publicly
how it used people's data to sell and display advertisements.
The "ad tech" report was part of the ACCC's wider
examination of online platforms which earlier this year prompted Google to say
it might withdraw core services from the country over laws forcing it to pay
for media content that features on its websites.
Google has since announced content payment deals with most
of Australia's largest media outlets, as did social media giant Facebook which
did cut news feeds in the country for a week in the days before the law was
passed.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who commissioned the report, said
in a statement the government would consider the report's findings and
recommendations.