The EU's €2.42bn fine against Google: still working in your favour today

Google gave its own Shopping comparison service prominent placement in search results, while systematically demoting rival price comparison services. The decision covers 13 EEA countries and almost a decade of conduct.

It is precisely this ruling that opened up the Shopping auction to independent Comparison Shopping Services (CSSs) – the foundation of every CSS partner programme available to merchants today.

Commissioner Vestager calls Google's conduct a clear breach of the law

„Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That's a good thing. But Google's strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn't just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, 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. What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation."

Google has systematically favoured its own price comparison service since 2008

Google's flagship product is its search engine, which delivers results to consumers who pay for them with their data. Almost 90% of Google's revenue comes from advertising, including the ads triggered by search queries.

In 2004, Google entered the separate European market for price comparison with a product initially called "Froogle". It was renamed "Google Product Search" in 2008, and has been called "Google Shopping" since 2013. Established providers already existed when it launched. An internal Google document from 2006 noted: "Froogle just doesn't work."

Price comparison services depend heavily on traffic to stay competitive. More traffic means more clicks, more sales, and more merchants wanting to list their products. Because Google dominates general search, Google Search is a crucial source of traffic for any price comparison service.

From 2008, Google fundamentally changed its strategy in European markets. Its own comparison service was systematically placed at or near the top of search results, while competitors were subjected to generic search algorithms with criteria that pushed rival services further down. Google's own service was exempt from these demotions. The result: Google Shopping was far more visible to consumers than any of its competitors.

This breaches EU antitrust law because Google abused its market power in search

Holding a dominant market position is not illegal in itself under EU law, but dominant companies carry a special responsibility not to abuse that position to restrict competition – neither in the dominated market nor in neighbouring markets.

The Commission found that Google has held a dominant position in general internet search across the entire European Economic Area – all 31 EEA countries – since 2008 (since 2011 in the Czech Republic), with market shares mostly above 90%. Google introduced self-preferencing in 13 EEA countries: Germany and the United Kingdom (January 2008), France (October 2010), Italy, the Netherlands and Spain (May 2011), the Czech Republic (February 2013), and Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Poland and Sweden (November 2013).

Self-preferencing sent Google's own traffic soaring and crashed the competition's

On desktop alone, around 95% of all clicks go to the top ten generic results on page 1 (the top result alone gets about 35%). The first result on page 2 gets only about 1%. Moving the top result down to position 3 already halves its clicks. On mobile devices, the effect is even more pronounced.

As a result of these practices, traffic to Google's own comparison service rose sharply, while competitors lost heavily:

The Commission based its decision on terabytes of search data and internal documents

For its decision, the Commission gathered and analysed a wide range of evidence, including:

1. Internal documents from Google and other market participants.
2. Around 5.2 terabytes of real Google search results – about 1.7 billion search queries.
3. Experiments and surveys on how search result visibility affects consumer behaviour and click-through rate.
4. Financial and traffic data on the commercial impact of visibility and demotion in Google Search.
5. A comprehensive market survey of customers and competitors, sent to several hundred companies.

Google must pay up and treat its own service like any competitor

The €2,424,495,000 fine reflects the duration and severity of the infringement and was calculated based on the revenue Google generated with its price comparison service in the 13 affected EEA countries.

Google was required to stop the illegal conduct within 90 days and not to continue any equivalent practice. In particular, Google must apply the same processes and methods for positioning and displaying rival comparison services in its search results as it applies to its own service. The Commission monitors compliance, and Google must report regularly.

If Google breaches these requirements, it faces penalty payments of up to 5% of Alphabet's average daily worldwide turnover. In addition, any person or company harmed by its anticompetitive conduct can sue Google for damages in national courts – made easier by the EU's Antitrust Damages Directive.