Google: European Commissions’ decision on online shopping – the other side of the story
Jun 27, 2017
The Commission has taken the decision to fine Google €2.42 billion for abusing dominance as a search engine, by giving illegal advantage to own its comparison shopping service.
However, Google believes this fine to be an unfair decision because online shopping platforms have changed a lot in the last years. In today’s world, shopping advertisement that you can find on google show pictures and prices when searches are executed.
This leads to benefits on the one hand for the advertiser and product provider, and on the other hand for the users because it is easier for them to follow a link which will bring them directly to the item they want to buy, than go on a website where they have to repeat their previous searches.
Thus, Google explains that when we are searching for a product on the internet, they are not favouring a website (like amazon for instance), they are instead basing the results of the search engine on the feedback of the users.