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Unless I've misunderstood what the fine was for. Fining a private business €2.4bn for promoting its own affiliates over other networks, how is that in any way a
by vegancap 9y ago
Unless I've misunderstood what the fine was for. Fining a private business €2.4bn for promoting its own affiliates over other networks, how is that in any way an abnormal business practice? I'm not trying to be controversial, I just don't understand how that warrants such a hefty fine.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoIt's because there are additional regulatory requirements on businesses that have disproportionate market influence. Promoting your own services in general is fine. But when a huge, huge majority of the market uses your service for discovery, your decision to promote your own services over competitors' damages competition in the market — users end up with less choice in practice, even though they could theoretically switch to another service. Those rules exist to try and prevent this sort of abuse happening.
- andmarios 9y agoAccording to the press release, Google went into the product comparison sector and took about 80% of the pie without competing with other product comparison engines, instead they just used their dominant position in search. If they had competed and won this share fairly, they wouldn't get a fine. Remember that EU, during these years was consistently the largest, or the second largest, depending on year, economy of the world, so this 80% is huge and justifies the size of the fine.