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EU Poised To Fine Google More Than $1 Billion in Antitrust Case (marketwatch.com)
Google is braced for a fine of potentially more than 1bn euro ($1.18 billion) as Brussels prepares to make the first of three antitrust decisions on the search group's practices, the first sanction by a leading competition regulator on the way it operates. From a report: The penalty, expected to be announced in the coming weeks, could exceed the record 1.1 billion euro bill slapped on Intel, in 2009 for anti-competitive behavior in the computer-chip market, the two people told The Times. The European Commission's antitrust body declined to comment to MarketWatch on the FT report, but referred to the latest steps taken in the case against Google. In July last year, the commission reiterated its conclusion that the search giant had "abused its dominant position by systematically favoring its comparison shopping service in its search result pages." Google and its parent company Alphabet were then given 10 weeks to respond to the findings. Reuters reported last month that Google had attempted to settle the dispute with the EU three times in the last six years, but the sides had failed to reach a compromise.
systematically favoring its comparison shopping service in its search result pages.
I have problems with Google, but .... fining them for favoring its own shopping service? Come on. It's their search engine, and their shopping service, and I don't like it and don't use it. Easy enough.
What they need to be fined for is collecting data on people who are NOT their customers and turning the entire web not to mention email into a giant surveillance network with Google trackers embedded everywhere. Most people have no idea how to avoid the Google Big Data Machine even if they are trying to avoid all Google products and services and have never signed up for anything with Google.
Fine them for that, not for merely favoring their own services.
>> Google had attempted to settle the dispute with the EU three times in the last six years
If Google had better lawyers, maybe their attempt to drag this out without resolution would have extended past ten years rather than a mere six.
The EU did not choose that Google would violate antitrust laws. Google did.
Why comment, if you don't need to convince anyone — neither beyond reasonable doubt nor even on the preponderance of evidence?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
They should fine Bing for antitrust reasons and promoting a Google monopoly by being so unusably awful.
any firm that dealing with the EU, they will be treated punitively in direct proportion to the size of their wallet.
Only if they choose to break the law.
they will be treated punitively in direct proportion to the size of their wallet.
Are you trying to say they should be fined 50€ instead?.
Do you know what the purpose of a fine is? It is to dissuade such behaviour. If the fine is not directly proportional to the size of their wallet, they either get crushed if it's too high, or don't care at all and continue if it's too small.
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
Google is a US company. The EU is going after them solely because of this fact, while domestic firms are given carte blanche
Absolutely true. Just look at the list of companies that have had antitrust rulings against them. Daimler, DAF, Saint-Gobain, Philips, Renault, Iveco, Siemens, Deutsche Bank.... None of these companies would have been ruled against if they were from the EU.
It's not Google's job to advertise for Bing.
Google's job is to index the web, and return relevant search results based on a fair algorithm. Hiding bing maps on the bottom of the 9th page (I finally found it), is not doing its job.
This is akin to USA Today complaining that the New York Times only advertises their own paper.
That's not the issue. The problem is not Google advertising their own search engine. The problem is abusing their dominant search engine to promote other business interests they own.