Alphabet's largest revenue generator is Google's advertising division, which produced over $100 billion in revenues last year. Despite efforts during the past ten years to expand into the sale of hardware, subscription services, and cloud computing technology, it accounted for around 80% of annual income. In June of last year, the European Commission opened an investigation into Google's adtech division because it was worried that the American tech giant would be gaining an unfair advantage over competitors and customers. 

Following this, the business, which faces a fourth billion-euro penalties, tried to settle the matter, but the concessions were little and only very tentatively accepted, one of the sources said. Over the past ten years, Google has accrued fines related to EU antitrust violations totaling more than 8 billion euros ($7.7 billion). Even though the timeframe could still alter, one of the persons said, the EU competition enforcer is likely to announce the charges in the first few months of 2019.

According to one of the participants, after receiving a statement of objections, the Commission requested that third parties remove any sensitive information from their submissions.By making more offers to resolve the probe, Google may be able to avoid the accusations.Before suggesting solutions that address specific regulatory concerns, some businesses desire to understand those concerns in detail.

The Commission opted against commenting. The owner of Instagram and Facebook, Meta Platforms Inc., as well as the global market leader in online advertising, Google, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dieter Paemen, a partner at the law firm Clifford Chance who has previously provided legal counsel to Google's competitors in other cases, claimed that the case strikes at the very core of Google's advertising-driven business model and affects advertisers, publishers, ad tech providers, and users equally.

Over the past few years, there have been more and more challenges to Google's supremacy in internet advertising. Its tactics have been the subject of antitrust investigations on five continents as a result of complaints from rivals regarding their alleged anti-competitive behaviour.

Nearly $111 billion in revenues were produced by Google's advertising division in the first half of the year. According to projections from Refinitiv, analysts predict that Google will make $233 billion in ad sales this year, an increase of around 11% over the previous year.

There are many other aspects to Google's ad business, but search advertising generate the most money. Other aspects include selling advertisements on the websites and applications of third parties as well as on YouTube, Gmail, and other internal services.