Google/eu: “anticompetitive” Google suffers record fine

Seven years after launching an antitrust probe into Google, the European Commission has gone for broke, said Rory Tingle on Mailonline. Competition chief Margrethe Vestager has slapped the US internet giant with a massive s2.42bn (£2.14bn) fine for abusing its near-monopoly to “skew” search results in favour of its own shopping services. The record penalty is more than double the figure expected and breaks the previous record of s1.06bn against Intel in 2009. The case – one of three the Commission is currently conducting against Google – has already “stoked tensions with Washington” and is likely to incur the wrath of President Trump. Google will probably appeal.

This decision is a “milestone” and could well lead to more cases in other search markets, said James Titcomb in The Daily Telegraph. The Commission found that Google, which has a 90% share of internet searches in the EU, systematically demoted rival comparison shopping sites in results, so that “even the most highly ranked service appears, on average, only on page four”. Google counters that the likes of Amazon and ebay already provide significant online shopping competition.

The hefty fine establishes Vestager, who last year forced Apple to pay s13bn in back taxes in Ireland, as “the Western world’s most aggressive regulator of digital services”, said Mark Scott in The New York Times. She will also be accused of targeting American companies; US regulators dropped their own investigation into Google in 2013. But some of Google’s “fiercest corporate critics” have cheered the ruling, said the FT. In an open letter to Vestager, signatories including News Corp, Oracle and Yelp expressed the hope that her action against Google would galvanise the US authorities to follow suit.