EU Commission fines Google €2.42 billion over antitrust abuses

Following a seven-year investigation, EU regulators fined Alphabet Inc.’s Google 2.4 billion euros on the grounds of violating of antitrust rules. According to EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, ‘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’. The ruling was triggered by complaints presented by retailers from Europe and United States who claimed that the company abused its search market dominance to give its Google Shopping service an advantage over other retailers and create a monopoly over consumers. Google said it will consider appealing the decision to the European Court of Justice.