The Court of the European Union rejected the appeal lodged by Google against the decision of the EU Commission to inflict a 2.42 billion euro fine on the web giant for abuse of dominant position.
The American company allegedly gave an illegal advantage to its shopping comparison service, Google Shopping. "Google has distanced itself from the competition on the merits" through a more favorable positioning of its purchase comparison service, instead downgrading competing services, relegated to the generic results column.
The Luxembourg judges argue that, at the end of its investigation launched in 2010 following the complaints filed by rivals TripAdvisor and Twenga, the Commission "correctly found harmful effects on competition" of the practice implemented in 11 Member States, including the Italy and Norway.
"Google is still unable to demonstrate any efficiency gains related to this practice that would offset its negative effects on competition," reads the court decision, which notes that, "even if the algorithms for the classification of generic results or the criteria for the positioning and display of the results of Google's specialized products may, as such, represent pro-competitive service improvements, this does not justify the practice in question, namely the unequal treatment of the results of Google's comparison shopping service and the results of competing comparative purchasing services ".
The Mountain View giant now has the possibility to appeal the sentence before the higher court, the EU Court of Justice.
"Ads on Shopping help people find the products they are looking for quickly and easily, and help merchants reach potential customers. Today's judgment, which we will examine in detail, refers to a series of very specific facts already in the 2017 we made changes to comply with the decision of the European Commission. Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services ": is the comment of a spokesperson for Google after confirmation of the fine.
(Unioneonline / F)
