Google may be fined $6 billion by EU for monopoly

Google may be fined US$100 million by the EU for monopoly

Tencent Technology News On Tuesday, the outgoing member of the European Commission’s Competition Committee warned that the dispute between Google (Weibo) and the European Commission The antitrust dispute may intensify. The number of fines faced by Google may exceed Microsoft's 100 million euros that year.
Joaquín Almunia, the European Commission Competition Commissioner, made a dramatic change of position. He told the European Parliament that unless Google changed its proposal to settle the complaint, it would receive a statement of objection. If so, Google would face The fine of US$100 million is equivalent to 1% of the company's total global revenue.
Almunia told members of the European Parliament that the European Commission has conducted a year-long investigation into Microsoft due to monopoly issues, which is equivalent to twice the time that Google has been investigated, and compared to Microsoft and Google, there are more problems. .
Almunia’s remarks are contrary to his remarks before this summer. At that time, he was ready to accept Google's third antitrust settlement offer. Almunia officially began an antitrust investigation into Google in around 2016. Google's competitors, including Microsoft, were delighted with Almunia's change.
In the European online search market, Google controls more than % of the market share, far exceeding its market share in the US online search market. Almunia originally intended to accept Google's settlement request, but French and German politicians, lobbying groups, and other committee members publicly expressed their opposition to accepting Google's third settlement offer, so it fell apart.
But Almunia told MEPs that he changed his position because of the emergence of new factual evidence about the impact of Google's settlement proposal on its competitors.
He added that the European Commission’s Competition Committee may also investigate Google’s priority position in operating systems. He said the U.S. search company may also face another investigation for potentially diverting non-search Internet traffic to Google services.
In response, Google spokesperson Alwoni said that we will continue to work with the European Commission to address their concerns.
Almunia left the European Commission’s Competition Committee this month and will hand over the Google antitrust investigation to his successor Margrethe Vestager.
Almunia said in September that many companies, including European publishers, had complained that Google was using its position in the European search market to promote and + social networks. Last week News Corp's Robert Thomas wrote to Almunia expressing dissatisfaction with Google's dominance of the European search market.