The European Union has fined tech giant Google a record\u00a0\u20ac2.4 billion after it was found guilty of manipulating its search engine results to expand\u00a0its comparison shopping service.<\/p>\n
The company must now end the conduct within 90 days or face penalty payments of up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said the EU’s competition commission.<\/p>\n
“Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That’s a good thing. ” said commissioner Margrethe Vestager\u00a0who is in charge of competition policy.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
In 2004 Google entered the separate market of comparison shopping in Europe, with a product that was initially called “Froogle”, re-named “Google Product Search” in 2008 and since 2013 has been called “Google Shopping”.<\/p>\n
While it was not the first comparison shopper on the market, it has subsequently grown to be the biggest.<\/p>\n
The commission subsequently found that by promoting its own comparison shopping service, it unfairly disadvantaged the other comparison services which \u00a0to a large extent on traffic to be competitive.<\/p>\n
You can read the full judgement here.<\/a><\/p>\n
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