Dive Brief:

• The European Union’s chief antitrust regulator Margrethe Vestager Thursday announced several new charges against Google claiming that the company restricts consumer choice with their advertising products. Google could face fines of up to 10% of its global annual revenue, or some $7 billion.

• This is the third round of charges against Google since last year, including one that claims it skews shopping results toward itself and restricts rival ad platforms online. 

• Google has until this fall to respond to the charges but said in a statement: “We believe our innovations and product improvements have increased choice for EU consumers and promote competition. We’ll examine the commission’s renewed cases and provide a detailed response in the coming weeks.”

Dive Insight:

The EU states that it has "a broad range of additional evidence and data" that shows Google unfairly skews shopping results, pushing down smaller rivals on its results page in favor of its own comparison-shopping results.

“We see that happen very, very, very often,” Vestager told journalists Thursday, according to Bloomberg.

The EU is also looking at Google's search products offered to some retailers to use on their websites, used by customers to find promotions. According the Times, Google required companies using its products to also include pay-for advertising, often provided through Google, next to the search results. It also required the companies to ask Google for approval on where to show rival ads on their websites. 

Earlier charges have also claimed that Google directed customers searching online to its own comparison-shopping website in lue of its competitors', charges that Vestager announced that the EU has doubled down on. 

Google predominance and high market share give it added responsibility under EU rules to ensure competition, and Vestager has been somewhat relentless in her investigation in the last year and a half or so.

“We believe that all these restrictions allowed Google to protect its very high market share for search advertising,” she said Thursday, according to a video of her press conference. “They hindered competition and of course they stifled choice and innovation to the detriment of consumers.”

And Google, meanwhile, has so far failed to impress Vestager and her team. As Fortune reports, Vestager’s office has already swatted away Google’s contention that the EU antitrust office failed to take into account the likes of eBay and Amazon as its competition. The EU has countered that those could hardly be called rivals and may actually indeed be Google’s customers.

Google, which has captured some 90% of Europe’s search market, also faces charges in France, Spain, and elsewhere, over taxes and privacy issues, as well as several consumer lawsuits in Europe, according to the New York Times.