After a fine issued to Google by the General Court of the European Union to Google two months ago, Google has decided to launch an appeal. The company has been fined $2.9 billion for acts that violate Union guidelines, such as giving more desirable internet 'real estate' to shopping platforms that pay. This violates the Union's guidelines in the way that it negatively affects internet competition between other shopping giants such as Amazon and eBay. Another reason that Google is violating guidelines is that searches are hesitant to present the consumer comparable prices from previously mentioned competitors.
It isn't too surprising that Alphabet (Google's parent company) has ultimately decided to send the alleged verdict of the General Court to a higher ranking court for reevaluation. $2.9 billion isn't necessarily a sum of money that the company want to just fork out, even if they can technically fulfill the sum. I do, though, think that it is unfair to hand internet space to competitors that pay more money to Google. This means that it would take longer to find comparable items for certain products being sold by a variety of companies. According to the article, however, the fine will likely not be able to be presented to a higher court of the EU for a number of years.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GOOGLE_EU_FINE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-09-12-14-16-03
I highly doubt Google will succeed in the appeal, based on the claims against them plus the evidence supporting it. Even if they have to pay, $2.9 billion is small compared to its $605 billion net worth.
ReplyDeleteMy question would be why hasn't the US government launched a similar complaint against Google, as we have laws concerning net neutrality as well? The topic even came to the public eye as recently as the 2014-15 political season with stories by news satirists such as John Oliver.
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