European regulators said to look at Google’s ad business

Regulators in the European Union are looking into Google’s advertising business, Bloomberg reported Monday.

The financial news service reported that authorities have been discussing Google’s practices with advertising firms to gather information that could be used to assemble a document formally laying out concerns with the company.

{mosads}This is not the first time the practices of Google’s advertising business — which represents a core stream of revenue for the California-based firm — has drawn scrutiny from E.U. regulators. As part of a 2010 inquiry into the company’s search business, regulators looked at whether the company had unfairly locked websites that used its advertising products into exclusivity agreements.

Europe’s antitrust regulators are already examining other parts of Google’s business.

That includes an investigation into charges that the company’s search results favor its own comparison shopping service over others. The company says the allegations aren’t accurate. Regulators are also looking into Google’s impact on the mobile operating system marketplace.

The zeal with which European competition regulators have pursued American tech firms has caused some to wonder whether the firms’ nationality had led to them being targeted. But European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has denied that.

“As I said, the nationality of a company is a nonrelevant fact,” she said in October. “Nonetheless, some claim that when our casework involves giants like Apple or Google, [it] is an evidence of bias. But this is a fallacy.”

A Google representative declined to comment on the report. Google CEO Sundar Pichai will meet with Vestager on Thursday.

—Updated at 11:39 a.m.