In a second appeal, Europe has once again accused Google of anti-competitive behaviour: according to a European judge, the search engine favours its own price comparison service, Google Shopping, and is therefore fined 2.42 billion euros.
Ongoing abuse of power?
For years, price comparison sites and apps have provided a clear overview of the online chaos by listing various suppliers of the same product in order of price. This way, consumers could see at a glance where they could buy at the lowest price.
Today, Google Shopping is the ultimate price comparator, so much so that 41 European price and product comparison sites have begged the European Commission to act against “Google’s ongoing abuse of power“. “Google continues to reserve the right to integrate its own price comparator directly into search results pages”, is what the complaint says.
Changes have been made
The European Commission’s competition watchdog already ruled in 2017 that it is unfair that Google puts Google Shopping’s search results at the top when consumers are looking for a product, while other price comparators, online stores and platforms are only shown thereafter. In fact, that is a distortion of competition and should be punished with a fine of 2.42 billion euros, the verdict says.
Parent company Alphabet immediately appealed against this, but this has now been rejected by the General Court of the European Union. Google must pay the fine. However, Google continues to object: “We have already made changes in 2017 per the decision of the European Commission. That approach has been working successfully for three years now, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 shopping services”, spokesman Michiel Sallaets said to the Belgian broadcaster VRT. The search engine giant says it is investigating the verdict and may still appeal to the European Court of Justice.
