Turkish Competition Authority decided that four competing undertakings which are engaged in the purchase and sale of used cars through online platforms, violated Article 4 of Law No. 4054 by entering into a gentleman's agreement to add each other's brand names to negative word lists in Google search-based advertising in the broad match, sequential match and exact match types was concluded with a settlement procedure for one undertaking.
In the assessment of the Authority;
- The mutual negation practice between two competing undertakings caused the advertisements of the undertakings to appear in queries containing certain words in the Google search engine, depending on the matching type, and caused a decrease in the diversity of advertisements in the search-based online advertising market,
- By reducing the quality of the service offered to users by the search engine, it prevents users from benefiting from price and service differences between competitors,
- In this framework, it was concluded that undertakings violated Article 4 of Law No. 4054 by sharing advertising space for certain queries made on Google and determining a strategy together in the search-based advertising market. The infringement subject to the case was evaluated under the category of “other infringements”.
On the other hand, the Authority concluded that since there is no information and/or document regarding the negativization agreement between the other two undertakings and the competitors, the undertakings may have made the negativization with their independent business decisions; therefore, there is no practice between the undertakings that constitutes a violation of competition pursuant to Article 4 of Law No. 4054.
(TCA decision - 13.07.2023, 23-31/589-199)
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