Antitrust

9 8 BACKGROUND TO THE GOOGLE SEARCH (SHOPPING) CASE On June 27, 2017, the EC imposed a fine on Google totaling €2.42 billion. The EC concluded that Google had abused its dominant position and therefore infringed Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) by favoring its own shopping comparison service in its general results pages over the services of its competitors. As well as imposing commitments on Google, the EC decision included a cease and desist order binding Google and its mother company Alphabet Inc., ordering Google to immediately bring the infringement to an end. Since the opening of the investigation in 2010, Google had proposed commitments on three occasions in an attempt to address the competition concerns identified by the EC. The first set of commitments was submitted to the EC in April 2013 following the EC's preliminary assessment in which it considered that Google could be abusing its dominant position in four different ways. 2 However, Google's proposal failed to convince the EC and the market players that had been invited to comment. In November 2013, Google therefore offered amended commitments, which it considered made changes to provide a greater visibility for rival services and tackle other specific concerns raised by the EC; however, the EC disagreed. In February 2014, in a third attempt to assuage the EC's concerns, Google agreed to promote, on its general search web, three rival services on the basis of objective criteria every time it promoted its own services. The EC was receptive to these commitments, but received negative comments during its market test. Therefore, as Google failed to offer remedies that convincingly addressed the EC's concerns, the latter issued a statement of objections (SO) in April 2015. The EC considered that Google held a dominant position in the general search market with a market share of more than 90% in many of the countries in which the infringement was taking place and that it had abused its dominant position by favoring its own shopping comparison service in its general search results. According to the EC, Google was leveraging its dominant position in internet search to gain a competitive advantage for its shopping services, and therefore instead of competing on merit, Google was illegally promoting its services to the detriment of its competitors. The EC considered that Google should treat its own comparison shopping services the same way as those of its competitors'. 3 COMMITMENTS AND THE PATH FORWARD In its final Google Shopping decision, the EC confirmed its preliminary position as set out in the SO and imposed a multi- billion euro fine. In addition, it stated that Google had "90 days from the date of the notification of this Decision to implement measures that bring the infringement UNILATERAL CONDUCT 18 G O O G L E H A D P R O P O S E D C O M M I T M E N T S O N T H R E E O C C A S I O N S I N A N A T T E M P T T O A D D R E S S T H E C O M P E T I T I O N C O N C E R N S I D E N T I F I E D B Y T H E E C Google and Compliance with the Google Shopping Decision

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