Google is a success story and the company is up over 40% since June last year. The company is well-known for its search engine which is the best in the world. Some people in this world doesn`t like this success and one of them is the European Commission.
The European Commission have received many complaints from competitors who claimed that Google abused its search market dominance to give its own business an advantage over other retailers. This is a clear picture of the relationship between Europe and the U.S right now.
“What Google has done is illegal under EU 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,” European Competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
The European Commission has been working on this case for over seven years, and the action came after complaints from rivals such as Yelp, TripAdviser, UK price comparison site Foundem, News Corp and lobbying group FairSearch.
This is not the first time the European Commission has attacked a U.S company. Last year they attacked Apple, and at that time, Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy said: “Member States cannot give tax benefits to selected companies.
This is illegal under EU state aid rules. The Commission`s investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years. In fact, this selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1% on its European profits in 2003 down to 0,005% in 2014.”
Apple has their own tax structure in Europe, which is Apple Sales International and Apple Operations Europe. Both are two Irish incorporated companies that are fully owned by the Apple group.
In 2001, the European Commission sent a sternly worded missive to Microsoft. EU accused the software maker of having illegally extended its dominance in operation systems for personal computers (PC`s) into adjacent markets, for tying Windows to programs that play music and videos.
The European Commission said Microsoft was too dominant in the market in 2001. Last year they claimed Google was too dominant in the internet search market. Google were also ruling the smart phone market with their Android system, which will be their next problem.
EU regulators in Brussels fined Google a record $2,7 billion today, ruling that the search-engine giant violated antitrust rules for its online shopping practices, and this is the largest doled out by Brussels.
Google disagreed with the EU action.
«We respectfully disagree with the conclusions announced today (Tuesday).We will review the (European) Commissions decision in detail as we consider an appeal, and we look forward to continuing to make our case,» Kent Walker, Googles Senior vice-president and General Counsel, said in a statement today.
It doesnt stop here. Next time, Brussels will attack Googles Android mobile operating system, which is a case that could potentially be the most damaging for Google.
Theodore Roosevelt led a populist party in 1912, and Ralph Nader campaigned against the power of large corporations such as auto companies. Now, 105 years later, EU is doing the same.
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