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EU Fines Google A Whopping €2.42 Billion For Fudging E-Commerce Search Results In Its Favour
Swarajya Staff
Jun 27, 2017, 05:22 PM | Updated 05:15 PM IST
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Antitrust regulators in the European Union (EU) have slapped a record-breaking fine of €2.42 billion ($2.7 billion) on Alphabet, Google’s parent company for favouring its own online shopping (e-commerce) firms in search results, reports Reuters. Google has been given 90 days to stop favouring its own service or end up paying an additional fine of five per cent of Alphabet’s global daily turnover.
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.European Competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager
The is the biggest fine any company has faced from the EU, exceeding the 2009 fine of €1.06 billion that was slapped on Intel. The fine was imposed after a seven-year long investigation prompted by rivals such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, Foundem, Reuters and FairSearch, a lobbying group. Regulators have also charged Google with using its Android system to ‘crush’ rivals, a charge that could have far-reaching effects.
Google responded saying that it disagreed with the ruling.
We respectfully disagree with the conclusions announced today (Tuesday). We will review the (European) Commission’s decision in detail as we consider an appeal, and we look forward to continuing to make our case.Google senior vice-president and general counsel Kent Walker.
The EU antitrust regulator had in 2007 fined technology giant Microsoft and forced them to release a version of its Windows operating system without the default Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player citing violations of antitrust practices to gain monopoly.
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