Google’s new attempts to get out of antitrust activity by the EU court are part of a pattern of repeated enforcement in the Eurozone against what officials describe as anticompetitive practices.
The current enforcement initiative described by Foo Yun Chee at Reuters is a $1.6 billion dollar fine around allegations that Google used its dominance to get people to use its AdSense platform instead of other alternatives, in the year range from 2006 to 2016.
For contrast, a prior case involved a €2.42 billion fine centered on Google’s price comparison shopping service.
Yun Chee calculates that three antitrust cases have ended up generating a total of €8.25 billion in fines.
In addition to the European enforcement, there have been a lot of Google detractors talking about the company’s responsibilities for many years.
“This Internet giant grew up with a free-spirit attitude and the ethical slogan of ‘Do No Evil’ – but today it has sold out those values and become just another money-grubbing outfit, as proven by its craven effort to weasel into the Chinese market,” wrote Jim Hightower at his Hightower Lowdown podcast site all of the way back in 2006.
“To get in, Google is paying a price in human freedom… and its own integrity. Google’s big shots have agreed to collaborate with China’s repressive rulers to censor that country’s Internet users and to help the government silence dissidents. Google will block access, for example, to any pesky Internet sites that deal with such taboo topics as ‘democracy,’ or ‘Tiananmen Square,’ which the Chinese propaganda ministry considers ‘sensitive.’”
Now it comes down to how this enforcement action is levied. In the past, Google had been outspoken about criticizing the EU chiefs’ policy.
“The fine that was imposed, a staggering 4.34 billion euros, was not appropriate,” Google’s lawyer Genevra Forwood said last fall, when Google faced its prior punishment. “The problem is not the headline-grabbing fine per se. The problem is how the Commission reached that figure.”
Keep an eye on this mega tech firm.
