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Google To Comply With EU Search Demands To Avoid More Fines (bloomberg.com)

Google will comply with Europe's demands to change the way it runs its shopping search service, a rare instance of the internet giant bowing to regulatory pressure to avoid more fines. From a report: The Alphabet unit faced a Tuesday deadline to tell the European Union how it planned to follow an order to stop discriminating against rival shopping search services in the region. A Google spokeswoman said it is sharing that plan with regulators before the deadline expires, but declined to comment further. The EU fined Google a record 2.4 billion euros ($2.7 billion) in late June for breaking antitrust rules by skewing its general search results to unfairly favor its own shopping service over rival sites. The company had 60 days to propose how it would "stop its illegal content" and 90 days to make changes to how the company displays shopping results when users search for a product. Those changes need to be put in place by Sept. 28 to stave off a risk that the EU could fine the company 5 percent of daily revenue for each day it fails to comply. "The obligation to comply is fully Google's responsibility," the European Commission said in an emailed statement, without elaborating on what the company must do to comply.

3 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Extortion pure and simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's not extortion if it's legal. Feel free to keep carrying water for a multi-billion dollar corporation that doesn't need your help, though!

  2. Re:Extortion pure and simple by innocent_white_lamb · · Score: 3, Informative

    For a period of about 10 years in the early 1990's it was impossible to by a PC that did not include a MS Windows license.
     
    That "ten years" is still ongoing today, unless you know something I don't know.
     
    I can't walk into Staples and buy a computer without Windows. I might be able to get a desktop from a computer specialty store as a custom build. I certainly can't buy a new laptop in any retail store (that I'm aware of) without Windows.

    --
    If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
  3. Re:Would this happen to a EU company? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Perhaps you only see these big cases because these are the ones that are big in US news. If a bunch of EU companies are fined in EU, that is rarely news here.
    Also, companies with insane profits tend to get insane fines, hence the very large ones against Google and Facebook.

    Instead of speculating I would recommend you to go directly to the source and search for yourself (note, there might be more but I only searched for the obvious search terms):
    http://europa.eu/rapid/search-result.htm?text=antitrust+fines&titleOnly=1