According to a report in the Guardian, search engine giant Google has been reportedly accused of manipulating search results to promote its new Google shopping service. EU officials are expected to announce that Google has been guilty of abusing its market dominance.
Earlier, Intel was charged over antitrust issues. The Financial times reported that the fine could be similar to what Intel was charged with. It is possible that Google could be fined close to 1 billion euros.
As per the reports “A financial sanction for abuse of a monopoly position is capped at a maximum of 10% of the total revenues of the company involved”.
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Last year the sanction was $90 billion last year in the case of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. This is calculated as up to 30% of Google’s shopping revenues multiplied by the number of years of the anti-competitive behaviour.
It is important for Google to propose how it tends to multiply its shopping business in future. Moreover, if it fails to agree with a deal with the commission in the set time period, it could be fined up to 5% of average daily turnover for each day.
Earlier, companies like Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon were investigated by the European regulators. In the case of Google, this is not the first time that the commission is suspecting the company of such behaviour.
The report said, “In July last year, the Commission had reiterated its belief that the search giant had abused its dominant position by systematically favouring its comparison shopping service in its search result pages”.
