The European Commission fines Google 2.42 billion euros (2.7 billion U.S. dollars) for abusing its dominance as a search engine by giving illegal advantage to its own comparison shopping service.
"The European Commission has fined Google 2.42 billion euros (2.7 billion dollars) for breaching EU antitrust rules. Google has abused its market dominance as a search engine by giving an illegal advantage to another Google product, its comparison shopping service," an European Union statement said.
"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," said Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy.
What Google has done is illegal under European Union 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, she added.
The EU said the company must now end the conduct within 90 days or face penalty payments of up to 5 percent of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet, Google's parent company.
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