"The European Commission has fined Google €2.42 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules. Google has abused its market dominance as a search engine by giving an illegal advantage to another Google product, its comparison shopping service," the commission said in statement.
According to the statement, Google must "now end the conduct within 90 days" or face penalty payments of up to percent of the average daily worldwide turnover its parent company Alphabet.
"But Google's strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn't just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, 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," EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said, as quoted by the statement.
