Advertisers Demand Antitrust Probe of Google’s Ad-Tracking

(Bloomberg) -- Digital advertisers are seeking a wider German antitrust probe of Google's news service, potentially deepening scrutiny of how the search engine gathers data.

The Movement for the Open Web, a group of advertising technology and publishing companies that prefer not to be named for fear of retaliation from the Alphabet Inc. unit, filed a complaint with the German Federal Cartel Office on Tuesday.

The group urged an examination of how Google may curb publishers' ability to collect data to target ads, according to an emailed statement.

Google and the German Federal Cartel Office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google offered last month to rein in its News Showcase service to defuse a clash with the German authority, which is wielding new powers to probe and ban big tech practices it deems anti-competitive.

The current probe focuses Google's contracts with the publishers for the news service and how it would be displayed in Google's search results. Movement for the Open Web wants investigators to also dive into a clash over how Google's changes to tracking users may harm how publishers gather data on users to make money from ads. Google says its plan is to improve privacy for users.

Pushback from regulators and publishers has already forced Google to drop initial plans to phase out the third-party cookies that help advertisers pinpoint customers with ads for websites they previously visited and monitor which ads convinced them to buy.

Google now plans to replace cookies by categorizing people based on areas of interests, preserving privacy by giving a less specific log of websites that people visit.