On 2018-11-21, the European Union said it was looking more closely at claims that Google had helped push false price-comparison sites into its shopping results as part of the company’s response to a major antitrust ruling.
European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager confirmed the issue when asked by AFP whether her team had noticed the practice, which Sky News had first reported. “Oh yes indeed,” she said, adding: “Of course we have seen that because we do the monitoring but also because we have people coming to us.”
According to critics, Google gave incentives to advertising agencies to build “fake” comparison sites that could appear inside the Google Shopping box. Those sites were described as misleading because they were not really designed to help customers compare products, and some were said to malfunction when users opened them.
The shopping box sits prominently at the top of search results and is central to Google’s response to a then-record 2.4 billion euro fine imposed by the European Commission for anti-competitive conduct. The company controls about 90 percent of the search market in Europe, according to EU data.
The penalty followed seven years of investigation triggered by complaints from rival comparison services, which said they lost 90 percent of their traffic to Google Shopping, according to the European Commission. Google is appealing the fine.
To avoid more sanctions, the company was ordered to give rival shopping services the same chance to display ads in search results as Google Shopping receives. If regulators decide the remedy is not being followed, Google could face extra payments of up to 5 percent of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet, its parent company.
Vestager said the sites appeared to be misidentified. “These are (advertising) agencies” creating the sites, “they are not doing shopping comparison,” she said. “Advertising is their main mission in their business life and now they are here, so what is this?”
She added: “Of course we are following up with Google to say well shopping comparison is shopping comparison and it is not advertising as such.” Google did not respond to a request for comment.
The Google Shopping case had already broken the European Union’s previous record for a monopoly case and cemented the bloc’s role as a leading regulator of Silicon Valley companies. That record was later overtaken by a 4.34 billion euro ($5 billion) penalty against Google over the abuse of its Android operating system on mobile devices.
