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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Any Edge is Unfair! EU Witch Hunt Group Fines Google Record €2.4 Billion

Courtesy of Mish.

The European Commission, a group that proves the UK is better off outside the EU, fined Google $2.7BN for EU Antitrust Violations Over Shopping Searches.

The EC claims

  • Google has systematically given prominent placement to its own comparison shopping service: when a consumer enters a query into the Google search engine in relation to which Google’s comparison shopping service wants to show results, these are displayed at or near the top of the search results.
  • Google has demoted rival comparison shopping services in its search results: rival comparison shopping services appear in Google’s search results on the basis of Google’s generic search algorithms. Google has included a number of criteria in these algorithms, as a result of which rival comparison shopping services are demoted.

According to the EC nannycrats, Google has an “unfair” advantage. Google has been instructed to “stop its illegal conduct within 90 days.”

The EC also has two outstanding formal investigations into Google’s Android phone business that “breach EU antitrust rules.”

Google Response

A  Google Blog post tells The Other Side of the Story.

When you shop online, you want to find the products you’re looking for quickly and easily. And advertisers want to promote those same products. That’s why Google shows shopping ads, connecting our users with thousands of advertisers, large and small, in ways that are useful for both.

We believe the European Commission’s online shopping decision underestimates the value of those kinds of fast and easy connections. While some comparison shopping sites naturally want Google to show them more prominently, our data shows that people usually prefer links that take them directly to the products they want, not to websites where they have to repeat their searches.

We think our current shopping results are useful and are a much-improved version of the text-only ads we showed a decade ago. Showing ads that include pictures, ratings, and prices benefits us, our advertisers, and most of all, our users. And we show them only when your feedback tells us they are relevant. Thousands of European merchants use these ads to compete with larger companies like Amazon and eBay.

Not About Competition

Writer Daniel Lacalle provided a better defense of Google in The EU Google Fine Is Not About Competition But Against US Tech Giants.


Continue reading here…

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