Google has been promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors

Google has been hit with a record fine of €2.42 billion (£2.1 billion) by Europe’s competition watchdog. After they were found breaching antitrust rules with its online shopping service.

Moreover, the European Commission said the tech giant had abused its market dominance as a search engine. By handing an “illegal advantage” to its comparison shopping operation.

Google Shopping started seven years ago. Amid complaints it gave the service a prominent position on the internet search engine, while rival services were demoted.

Furthermore, the search giant now has 90 days to stop the practice. Or they could face a penalty of up to 5% of the average daily turnover of the firm’s parent company, Alphabet.

In addition to this, Google said in a statement: “When you shop online, you want to find the products you’re looking for quickly and easily.

“And advertisers want to promote those same products. That’s why Google shows shopping ads. Connecting our users with thousands of advertisers, large and small, in ways that are useful for both.

“Lastly, we respectfully disagree with the conclusions announced today. We will review the commission’s decision in detail as we consider an appeal. And we look forward to continuing to make our case.”

Source: www.mirror.co.uk