Google is a company that wears many hats, so many hats in fact that they’ve had to create a new parent company, Alphabet, to house all the different products and services that Google has created over the years. One of those services that Google created is a comparison shopping service, and it seems that Google has landed into a spot of trouble with the EU over it.The EU’s antitrust regulator has recently announced that they will be fining Google a whopping $2.7 billion for allegedly abusing its dominance as a search engine, and in doing so it gave their own comparison shopping service an advantage over the competition. This is according to Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
Vestager was quoted as saying, “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.”
Vestager adds, “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.” The commission has also given Google 90 days to stop its “illegal conduct” and to tweak its algorithm to ensure that all services are equally favored in the search results.
Unsurprisingly Google has denied these allegations and in a statement made by the company, “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.”