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results pages through more favorable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits.”
Google said it was reviewing the decision but added that it had made changes to its shopping product to comply with the 2017 decision.
“Shopping ads have always helped people find the products they are looking for quickly and easily and helped merchants to reach potential customers,” the company said.
“Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services.”
The $2.75 billion fine was a record at the time, before being surpassed in 2018, when the commission fined Google about $5 billion for illegally using the Android operating system to bolster the use of its search engine and other services on mobile devices.
In 2019, Vestager’s office fined Google more than $1.7 billion for imposing unfair terms on companies that used its search bar on their websites in Europe.
The investigations of Google helped inspire stiffer new competition rules that are being drafted in the European Union that target the world’s largest technology platforms.
The draft law — the Digital Markets Act — is expected to be adopted next year and would give European regulators new powers to intervene in the digital economy, including blocking companies such as Google and Apple from giving their services preferential treatment over rivals.
Violating the new rules would result in fines of up to 10% of a company’s annual revenue.
Google’s competitors welcomed Wednesday’s ruling, but many said the investigations and court hearings had taken so long that Google had been able to further entrench its dominant position.
“While we welcome today’s judgment, it does not undo the considerable consumer and anti-competitive harm caused by more than a decade of Google’s insidious search manipulation practices,” said Shivaun Raff, CEO and co-founder of Foundem, a comparison shopping service in Europe that helped bring the original complaint against Google.