On March 20, 2019, the European Commission fined Google €1.49 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules regarding abusive practices in online advertising. The European Commission stated that Google abused its market dominance by using its position to include in a number of clauses in contracts with website owners that restricted how and whether they could show competitors’ search ads on their search results pages. These competitors were then not able to compete on the merits, “because there was an outright prohibition for them to appear on publisher websites or because Google reserved for itself by far the most valuable commercial space on those websites, while at the same time controlling how rival search adverts could appear.” These actions amounted to an abuse of Google’s market dominance under EU antitrust laws by preventing competition on the merits from rivals in the online search advertising intermediation market. The Commission noted that market dominance is not illegal under EU antitrust rules, but “dominant companies have a special responsibility not to abuse their powerful market position by restricting competition, either in the market where they are dominant or in separate markets.”