Google fined record £2bn

The European commission has ordered Google to pay a sum of £2.1 billion for boosting their own comparison shopping services to the top of the search results.

Commissioner Margrethe Vestager says “Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors.”

In 2004, Google entered the market of comparison shopping with Froogle which later became Google Shopping. After the initial poor market performance, from 2008 they implemented the new strategy to give their own shopping service prominence above all others in the same market.