The European Union on Thursday fined Google $1 billion, concluding the tech giant violated the bloc’s antitrust rules by favoring its own services in search results and imposing unlawful restrictions through its Android app store.
The penalties were issued under the European Union’s three-year-old Digital Markets Act, or DMA, which is designed to prevent the largest technology platforms from using their dominant positions to lock in users and disadvantage competitors.
The larger penalty, totaling more than $500 million, stems from Google’s practice of giving its own shopping, hotel, transportation, and sports services preferential placement in search results over rival offerings.
A second fine of just under $500 million targets the Google Play Store, which comes preinstalled on Android devices. The European Commission found that Google prevented app developers from directing users to cheaper offers outside the Play Store and charged developers steering-related fees that exceeded the DMA’s regulations.
“Google has fallen short of effective compliance with the Digital Markets Act, and today we have taken decisive yet balanced enforcement action sanctioning these breaches,” Teresa Ribera, the European Commission’s executive vice president for competition policy, said in a statement. “The best products should succeed because they’re better, not because they’re owned by the company running the search engine.”
The commission had reportedly reached its decision as early as March, drawing criticism from industry groups and civil society organizations that accused Brussels of delaying enforcement to avoid escalating tensions with Washington.
Google pushed back against the ruling. Kent Walker, the company’s president of global affairs, said the decision would force Google to remove real-time search features Europeans rely on, including hotel and flight pricing and availability, while weakening security protections on the Play Store.
The commission’s actions amount to “product degradation driven by a small group of self-serving complainants,” Walker said in a statement.
“This isn’t fair competition; it’s product degradation,” he added. “Regulation should improve products, not make them worse.”
The decision also comes as White House is expected to announce new tariffs on imports from the EU and other trading partners on Friday. European officials fear the replacement tariffs could exceed the 15% ceiling negotiated under the trans-Atlantic trade truce negotiated with President Donald Trump nearly a year ago.
The Trump administration has also criticized European penalties against U.S. technology companies, portraying them as unfair trade barriers.
Ribera dismissed suggestions that political considerations influenced the commission’s decision.
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“We are bound by the law,” she said. “I don’t think that any of us being part of the Commission could be respected if we could decide whether to do or not to do because someone else is trying to tell us what to do.”
Google has faced repeated scrutiny from EU regulators over the past decade and has been fined more than $11 billion since 2017.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
