EU fines Google € 2.42 billion for Shopping antitrust breach

Google was found to have given its own Shopping comparison service prime placement in search results while systematically downgrading rival comparison shopping services. The decision covers 13 EEA countries and almost a decade of conduct.

This is the ruling that opened the Shopping ad auction to independent Comparison Shopping Services (CSSs) — the foundation of every CSS Partner program available to merchants today.

Statement from Commissioner Margrethe Vestager

„Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That is a good thing. But Google's strategy for its comparison shopping service was not 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's strategy for its price comparison service

Google's flagship product is its search engine, which delivers results to consumers who pay 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 comparison shopping market with a product first called "Froogle", renamed "Google Product Search" in 2008 and "Google Shopping" since 2013. By the time it launched, several established comparison services were already on the market. A 2006 internal Google document admitted: "Froogle just doesn't work."

Comparison shopping services depend heavily on traffic to be competitive. More traffic means more clicks, more sales and more merchants willing to list their products. Because Google dominates general search, its search engine is a critical source of traffic for any comparison shopping service.

From 2008 Google fundamentally changed its strategy in European markets. It systematically placed its own comparison service at or near the top of the search results page, while applying generic search algorithms — with criteria that pushed rival comparison services down — only to its competitors. Google's own service was exempt from those downgrades. The result: Google's own comparison shopping was far more visible than anyone else's.

Why this violates EU antitrust rules

A dominant position is not in itself illegal under EU law, but dominant companies carry a special responsibility not to abuse their position to restrict competition — either in the market where they are dominant or in adjacent markets.

The Commission found that Google 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 typically above 90 %. Google rolled out the self-preferencing practice in 13 EEA countries: Germany and the UK (January 2008), France (October 2010), Italy, the Netherlands and Spain (May 2011), Czech Republic (February 2013), and Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Poland and Sweden (November 2013).

The effects of Google's illegal practices

Even on desktop, the top ten generic results on page 1 collectively get around 95 % of all clicks (the top result alone gets about 35 %). The first result on page 2 receives only about 1 %. Moving the top result down to position three already cuts clicks by roughly 50 %. On mobile the effect is even more pronounced.

Because of these practices, traffic to Google's own comparison service surged while traffic to competitors collapsed:

Evidence collected

To reach its decision, the Commission compiled and analysed a wide range of evidence, including:

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

Consequences of the decision

The fine of € 2,424,495,000 reflects the duration and gravity of the infringement and was calculated on the basis of Google's revenue from its price comparison service in the 13 affected EEA countries.

Google was ordered to stop the illegal behaviour within 90 days and to refrain from any equivalent practice. In particular, Google has to apply the same procedures and methods to position and display competing comparison shopping services in its search results as it uses for its own. Compliance is monitored by the Commission, with reporting from Google.

If Google fails to comply, it can be fined up to 5 % of Alphabet's average global daily turnover. On top of that, Google faces civil damages actions in national courts brought by any person or company harmed by its anti-competitive conduct, helped by the EU Antitrust Damages Directive.