On Tuesday the 10th of September, the Court of Justice of the European Union confirmed the ruling (against which no appeal may be made) according to which Google must pay a fine of 2.4 billion Euros imposed in 2017 by the European Commission, on the grounds of abusing its dominant internet position, this deemed to be conduct contrary to EU antitrust laws.
An abuse of dominant position occurs when a company with a position of domination in a market behaves in such a way that may eliminate or restrict free competition, both in the market in which it principally operates, as well as in other markets into which it may expand.
A dominant position in a market is not deemed illegal under the laws of the European Union. However, companies which find themselves in such a position must take extra care to avoid that their dominant position does not become an abuse thereof.
In this case, Google – a company which holds a dominant position in the internet search engine market – was accused of exploiting its search engine in order to gain an illegal advantage over its competitors, by means of preferential indexing in its comparison service and online product offers, to the detriment of those services offered by the competition.
The fine imposed by the European Commission is based on the fact that, in the moment in which a user of Google’s search engine carried out a product search, whether generic (e.g., “shoes”) or specific (e.g., “Nike trainers”), Google placed its own comparison and product sale service called “Google Product Search” higher up than the search results themselves, to the detriment of smaller competitors, thus making them less visible. The European Commission affirmed that Google placed similar services offered by competitors in a position – on average – three to four pages behind their own brand service.
In any case, the European Commission did not base its fine on the design and functioning of Google’s search algorithms, nor on the order in which search results appeared on the site, but rather on the fact that an abuse of dominant position in the search engine market was carried out by Google for the purpose of gaining access to and dominating another separate market: price comparison services. This was achieved by means of the preferential introduction and positioning of Google’s own brand service to the detriment of those services offered by competitors.
Since the fine was imposed, Google has introduced changes to avoid that such a situation of abuse of dominant position by other Google services repeats itself. These changes are most clearly visible in Google’s location and review searches, in which, now, Google’s “Maps” or “Reviews” services no longer appear in a dominant position compared to other search results.
Oscar Vilá
Vilá Abogados
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13th of September 2024
