Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of the European Union’s antitrust body, announced on Wednesday, July 18, that Google “engaged in illegal practices to cement its dominant market position in internet search.” The European Commission decided to impose a fine of €4.3 billion (US$5.0 billion) and called on the company to put an effective end to these practices within 90 days, or face penalty payments.
Although the amount of the fine sets a new record, the main impact of the ruling is that it threatens the hold that Google has on the internet search market, from which it derives its main sources of revenue. Further to this, pundits have claimed that these remedies may come too late and that the company must be broken up.
The announcement had been anticipated for some weeks and took place after a meeting of national competition agencies that the Commission rescheduled from July 10 to July 17, apparently to avoid controversy over US President Donald Trump’s presence at the NATO summit held from July 9 to July 12.
In her announcement, Commissioner Vestager referred to “three types of restrictions that Google has imposed on mobile device manufacturers and network operators to ensure that traffic goes to Google Search:
First, Google has required manufacturers to pre-install the Google search and browser apps on devices running on the Android mobile operating system. Manufacturers had to do this if they wanted to be able to sell devices with the Google app store.
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