Google demoted rival shopping services and paid €2.42B for the privilege

Google had built the world’s most-used search engine, and by the late 2000s it faced a problem: its own comparison shopping service was losing to established rivals such as Kelkoo, PriceRunner and Foundem. Rather than improve the product, Google began positioning its own shopping results more prominently in general search results while systematically demoting rival comparison shopping services to lower positions. The practice began in Germany and the UK around 2008 and later expanded to 13 European Economic Area countries.

The European Commission investigated after complaints from Foundem (a UK price comparison site) and Kelkoo. In June 2017, the Commission ruled that Google had abused its market dominance in general internet search by giving illegal advantage to its own comparison shopping service. The Commission fined Google a record €2.42 billion (£2.1B; $2.7B) and ordered it to stop the conduct within 90 days or face penalty payments of up to 5% of Alphabet’s average daily worldwide turnover.

Google appealed to the General Court of the European Union. In November 2021, the General Court largely upheld the Commission’s decision, rejecting most of Google’s arguments (though it partially annulled the finding for 13 specific national markets on the grounds of insufficient evidence of market conditions). The fine was confirmed. Google further appealed to the European Court of Justice, where the case remained pending. The ruling established that self-preferencing by a dominant search engine can constitute an abuse of market power.