Some of Google’s Asia-Pacific retail advertisers cut back after the EU ended its de minimis exemption, chief business officer Philipp Schindler said on Alphabet’s third-quarter earnings call, without naming which ones. Schindler listed the EU change alongside currency swings, a drop in ad spending after the World Cup, and AI Mode earning less per query as reasons Search revenue barely moved from the second quarter, rising about $79M to $63.35B, though it was still up 12% from a year earlier. Since July, the EU has charged a temporary €3 duty per item type on parcels worth up to €150 shipped from outside the bloc, so sellers now pay on goods that used to arrive tax-free, nearly 5.9 billion of them in 2025 alone.
