News
Brussels reportedly readying record-breaking penalty as early as next month.
The European Commission plans to slap Google with a record-breaking €3 billion fine for anticompetitive practices related to its shopping comparison service.
This is according to sources cited by the Telegraph on Saturday, who claim that Brussels aims to impose the penalty before the summer recess, and could make an announcement as soon as next month.
An EU Statement of Objections (SO) sent to Google in April 2015 accused the Internet giant of systematically favouring listings from its own shopping comparison service, Google Shopping, over rival services in its general search results.
The SO called for shopping search results from rival aggregators to be given equal treatment to results from Google Shopping.
Google insists that its practices reflect its commitment to serving high-quality search results. It also argues that the likes of eBay and Amazon mean that there is plenty of competition in the online retail market.
It seems though that competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager disagrees.
According to Saturday’s Telegraph report, the proposed fine will account for Google’s sustained abuse of its dominant position in the online search market over several years.
The Commission will also ban Google from tweaking general search results in favour of its own services.
The situation could get worse still for Google, which was recently formally accused of abusing its dominant position in the smartphone OS market by imposing restrictions on Android device makers and mobile operators.
