U.S. internet giant Google on Wednesday received a new fine ticket of 1.49 billion EUR (1.69 billion USD) from the European Union (EU) for breaching anti-trust rules. The decision was made due to Google's "illegal misuse of its dominant position in the market for the brokering of online search adverts," said European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, in a press release. The European Commission maintained that "Google has abused this market dominance by preventing rivals from competing in the online search advertising intermediation market." Google was also discovered to force the publishers to "seek written approval from Google before making changes to the way in which any rival adverts were displayed," meaning that Google "could control how attractive, and therefore clicked on, competing search adverts could be," said the Commission. Google has been the strongest player in online search advertising intermediation in the European Economic Area (EEA) for more than 12 years. Its market share was above 70 percent from 2006 to 2016, said the European Commission. (1 EUR= 1.14 USD) (Updated)

Source: Xinhua