Google appeals their €2.4 Billion EU anti-trust fine

Back in June the EU presented the conclusion of their anti-trust investigation into Google’s shopping comparison services, finding that the company intentionally lowered the search ranking of competitors and gave themselves an unfair advantage over their competition. This resulted in the EU giving Google a €2.42 billion fine.  

Google was found to have given their shopping comparison services an unfair advantage over their competition, leveraging their dominance in the search engine market to give Google Shopping, formerly known as “Froogle”, a boost. Google set their service on the top of applicable searches and demoted rival services in their search rankings, denying competitors the ability to gain the traffic they otherwise deserved. 

  

Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That’s a good thing. But Google’s strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn’t just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results and demoting those of competitors.

What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation.

 

Google has now appealed the EU Commission’s decision, deciding not to block the regulator’s request to change their search engine to restore equal competition to avoid the EU’s promise of additional, daily, fines of 5% of Alphabet’s (Google Parent Company) daily Global Turnover if changes are not implemented by September 28th. 

This comes shortly after the European Court of Justice ordered a review/retrial to review the fine that Intel was given back in 2009, showcasing just how long this appeal process can last. In Intel’s case, their anti-competitive business dealings took place between 2002 and 2007, allowing Intel to go unpunished for almost a decade.  

The current case against Google was started back in 2010, showcasing how long it takes for large corporations to be punished for their misdeeds and how long they can appeal their fines for afterwards. 

 

 

Right now the EU has tow more investigations into Google that are pending, including an investigation into practices that websites from using its search bar alongside ads from competitors and how Google manages Android in the mobile phone market. The findings and potential fines from these investigations are expected to be given later this year. 

 

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