Google fined record €2.4bn by EU over search engine results (theguardian.com).
“The European Union has handed Google a record-breaking €2.42bn (£2.14bn, $2.74bn) fine for abusing its dominance of the search engine market in building its online shopping service, in a dramatic decision that has far-reaching implications for the company. By artificially and illegally promoting its own price comparison service in searches, Google denied both its consumers real choice and rival firms the ability to compete on a level playing field, European regulators said.”
The EU official in charge of competition policy Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, summing up the case as:
“Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors. What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation.”
A über-profitable company with a search results market share of approx. 80% and little regards for privacy when tracking you to see what you might buy with a pushed targeted ad that has seemingly come so far from its “Don’t be evil ” (Wikipedia) corporate philosophy mantra that Larry Page and Sergey Brin argued “prohibited conflicts of interest, and required objectivity and an absence of bias” in their 2004 founders’ letter prior to their initial public offering.
Updated 6th July 2017
And that may be just for starters:
EU considers record fine as panel checks Google Android case (reuters.com).
“EU antitrust regulators are weighing another record fine against Google over its Android mobile operating system and have set up a panel of experts to give a second opinion on the case, two people familiar with the matter said. … The [European] Commission in April last year charged Google with using its dominant Android mobile operating system to shut out rivals following a complaint by lobby group FairSearch, U.S.-based ad-blocking and privacy firm Disconnect Inc, Portuguese apps store Aptoide and Russia’s Yandex. … The potential fine is expected to top that 2.4 billion euro penalty [for unfairly favoring its shopping service last month].”
Updated 12th July 2017
Google has been paying academics up to $400,000 each to write papers that support the firm’s battle with regulators, report claims (dailymail.co.uk).
“Google has used academics to sway public opinion on their business practices by paying them vast sums of money for their research, according to a new report. Around a dozen professors have accepted money—and some even shared their paper with the company to make comments before publishing, the report said. These papers would have been used to support ongoing battles with regulators such as claims the company unfairly steers users to its commercial sites. … Research papers were used to counteract antitrust accusations against Google in 2012, the report said.”
Indeed, it seems what Google waves is the profit over ethics bottom line wad that was once reserved for berating Micro$oft‘s hold.
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