Google has been ordered to pay 2.4 billion pound (about Rs 21,790 crore) in fines for abusing the market dominance of its shopping comparison service. The European Court of Justice‘s action against the tech giant came after a 15-year-long legal battle with a UK couple who dragged Google to court after their website witnessed a dramatic drop in visibility on the platform.
Shivaun and Adam Raff, founders of the price comparison website ‘Foundem’, said that their website noticed a dramatic drop in their website’s visibility on Google searches for key terms such as “price comparison” and “shopping” after it went live in 2006.
Initially, the couple assumed the fall in visibility was an error. “We just assumed we had to escalate to the right place and it would be overturned,” explained Shivaun, according to BBC.
Despite many requests to Google to address the issue, the tech giant didn’t lift the penalty, the couple said.
Left with no option, the couple approached the European Commission in 2010. After a lengthy antitrust investigation, the Commission found Google unfairly promoted its own shopping service over competitors like Foundem and, in a 2017 ruling, imposed a fine of 2.4 billion pounds.
However, Google appealed, sparking seven years of legal battles. In 2024, the European Court of Justice upheld the fine, rejecting Google’s appeals.
“We’ve both been brought up maybe under the delusion that we can make a difference, and we really don’t like bullies,” said Shivaun.
Google, however, said that the fine addresses practices ended in 2017. A spokesperson told BBC, “The changes we made in 2017 to comply with the European Commission’s Shopping decision have worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services.”
