Brussels Sting on Mountain View. The European Commission has imposed a record fine on Google: 2,4 billion euros. The reason? “Antitrust violations”, i.e. abuse of dominance as the most used search engine in the world to obtain an illegal advantage in favor of its Google Shopping service.
In essence, the American giant would penalize the offers of competitors in the search "ranking" and would make its services appear in higher positions in searches made by users, to the detriment of competitors such as TripAdvisor and Expedia. The investigation, opened in 2010, is one of three against Google and one of several against US giants such as Starbucks, Apple, Amazon and McDonalds.
According to the EU Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, “what Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It has denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And, most importantly, it has denied European consumers a real choice of services and the full benefits of innovation”.
The fine breaks by far the previous record, which was $1,06 billion to US chipmaker Intel. But the amount is still very far from the maximum fine that the Commission could inflict on Google, or 8 billion euros, equal to 10% of the group's total revenues.
For its part, Google is not flustered: “We respectfully disagree with the conclusions presented today – says the head of the legal department, Kent Walker, in a note – We will examine the decision of the European Commission in detail while we evaluate an appeal and we will continue to defend our line".
