The Washington Post | By: Hamza Shaban and Brian Fung | June 27 at 12:07 PM:
Google just got hit with a record $2.7 billion fine in Europe.
The European Union’s head of antitrust enforcement announced a record $2.7 billion fine against Google on Tuesday, accusing the search engine for illegally favoring its own comparison shopping service as customers used Google to search for products online. That’s the biggest fine Europe has imposed on any company ever.
“What Google has done is illegal under E.U. antitrust rules. It has denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And, most importantly, it has denied European consumers the benefits of competition,” E.U. competition chief Margrethe Vestager said in Brussels on Tuesday.
As for Google, if Tuesday’s ruling stands, it could compel the company to redesign how it presents search results, shrinking its ability to attract advertising revenue. More broadly, the record fine may wind up steering the evolving boundaries of tech-industry regulation, defining the government’s power to shape a company’s behavior on the Web — even one as powerful as Google.
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