Welcome to the Tech Meam Ride Home for Wednesday, March 20th. 2019 I'm Brian McCullough.

Today, the EU Commission hits Google with another billion euro fine. Santa Tim has another surprise for us this morning with next generation airpods.

And in fact, it was a day of quiet upgrades to the Oculus Rift, to the Kindle even to Facebook messenger also movie pass brings back

its unlimited plan for now here's what you missed today in the world of tech. The European Commission has fined Google 1.49 billion euros for quote abusive practices

in online advertising, end quote,

and also breaching EU antitrust rules.

This makes the third time now that the EU has levied

an antitrust fine against Google.

Specifically, Commissioner Marguerite Vestager said, quote,

Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive

pressure by imposing

anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites.

This is illegal under EU antitrust rules. The misconduct lasted over 10 years

and denied other companies the possibility to compete on the merits and to innovate and consumers the benefits of competition

End quote even more specifically here's how The Verge described the issue.

The policy under scrutiny dates back to 2006.

Then Google started selling customers its AdSense for search product.

This let companies like retailers and newspapers place a

Google search box on their website. When visitors used the search box, Google showed

them ads and split the commission with the website's owners. But Google also made customers signed contracts for bidding them from

including rival search engines on their sites alongside Google's own. In 2009,

Google allowed the inclusion of rival search engines as long as Google's was more prominent.

...