Wednesday November 10, 2021
Trouble about price comparison service
EU court upholds Google’s billion dollar fine
In the dispute with the EU Commission, Google suffers a setback. Judges in Luxembourg reject the search engine operator’s objection to a multi-billion dollar competition penalty. Now all that remains for the online giant is to go to the European Court of Justice.
The EU court has confirmed a competition fine of 2.42 billion euros imposed by the EU Commission on Google. This was announced by the judges in Luxembourg. The court found that Google preferred its own shopping comparison service over competing services. An appeal can still be lodged with the European Court of Justice against the judgment.
Specifically, the Commission accuses Google of having given its price comparison service Google Shopping an unlawful advantage. The group has “abused its dominant position as a search engine operator by placing its own price comparison service at the top of its search results and downgrading the comparison services of the competition,” said the EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is still responsible for competition today.
From Google’s point of view, however, the decision from Brussels was “legally, factually and economically” wrong. It is the first judgment in a series of legal disputes between the EU Commission responsible for competition in the European Union and the US group. Since 2017, the Brussels authority has imposed several penalties on Google, some of them historic. So far, the three EU competition fines for Google add up to more than eight billion euros.
For example, due to the competitive situation with the most widely used smartphone system in the world – Android – the record fine of 4.34 billion euros was due in 2018. Eight months later, 1.49 billion euros were added because, from the Commission’s point of view, Google had inadmissibly hindered other providers in search engine advertising in the “AdSense for Search” service. Google is also taking legal action against the other two penalties.