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Author Archives: GovWorldMag

Daily News 27 / 06 / 2017

Antitrust: Commission fines Google €2.42 billion for abusing dominance as search engine by giving illegal advantage to own comparison shopping service The European Commission has fined Google €2.42 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules. Google has abused its market dominance … read more

EU

Google ruling makes this a good day for fair competition and consumers – Watson

Tom Watson MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, commenting on Google’s record fine for its shopping service, said:

“This ruling has been a long time coming and is a vindication of long running concerns about Google’s anti-competitive, unfair practices.

“When a company wields such power that it is effectively the gateway to the internet, it is the duty of regulators and lawmakers to verify that power is being exercised fairly. This ruling makes clear that Google shopping has not been operating fairly and could open the door to other investigations of similar examples of market distortion by the company.  

“This ruling rights an unfair wrong, making this a good day for fair competition and consumers.”

Ends

 

Notes

·         Today the European Commission has handed Google a record fine of 2.42bn euros ($2.7bn; £2.1bn) after it ruled the company had abused its power by promoting its own shopping comparison service at the top of search results.

·         Google’s unfair advantage has been a source of long running concern with Tom Watson writing about the issue in 2013 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/14/google-competition-searching-solution

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Labour •