European Union regulators hit Google with a $2.7 Billion fine yesterday claiming the search giant violated antitrust regulations in the way it was displaying search results for shopping related searches. The EU is giving Google 90 days to change how they display results or they may face an additional daily fine equal to 5% of average daily global revenue for Alphabet, Google's parent company. Google indicates they disagree with the EU's conclusions and they are reviewing the decision and options related to appeals.
The EU's investigation into shopping results began in 2010 and has been dragging on since then. Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition, indicated regulators pored through 1.2 billion search inquiries as part of their investigation. The Commission expects Google to apply the same algorithms used to display their own shopping service results to those of rival comparison shopping products. At least part of the reason the Commission is targeting Google in this area is because Google commands over 90% of the search market in Europe. Vestager noted that,
“Google abused its market dominance as a search engine to promote its own comparison shopping service in search results, whilst demoting those of rivals (…) This is not competition on the merits and is illegal under EU antitrust rules.”
Google has responded to the Commission's actions by indicating they are just trying to provide the best shopping service possible for their users. Kent Walker, SVP and General Counsel for Google, issued the following statement via a blog post,
“When you shop online, you want to find the products you're looking for quickly and easily. And advertisers want to promote those same products. That's why Google shows shopping ads, connecting our users with thousands of advertisers, large and small, in ways that are useful for both. (…) We respectfully disagree with the conclusions announced today. We will review the Commission's decision in detail as we consider an appeal, and we look forward to continuing to make our case.”
In a post, Walker goes on to note the company's position and reasons for building the shopping service the way they did. Part of this is because the shopping service is an improvement over the “text-only ads we showed a decade ago.” Walker also notes that the results that are displayed were designed to be more useful for users who “prefer links that take them directly to the products they want, not to websites where they have to repeat their searches.”
What do you think of the EU Commission on Competition's action?
sources: EU Commission, Google
via: XDA Developers
Excellent!