News or Speculation: Google and a Big Euro Fine?
June 7, 2017
I read “Google in Trouble? Company May Face $9 billion EU Fine over Its Shopping Service.” The headline surprised me. I had forgotten that Google failed with Froogle and never got its talons in the back of Amazon. But there you go. Google and shopping.
The write up grabs the weasel word “may” and goes to town. I learned from the write up:
In April 2015, the EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager accused the company of cheating consumers and competitors by distorting internet search results to favor its own shopping service. The latest development comes after a seven-year investigation into Google following complaints raised by both US and European rivals.
The magic $9 billion comes from a news report from the always on the beam real news outfit Thomson Reuters. Here’s the passage I highlighted in True Blue:
If found guilty of breaching EU antitrust rules, fines for companies can reach up to 10% of their global turnover. And, in case of Google, the fine could be about $9bn (£6.99bn) of its 2016 turnover, a Reuters report said. In addition to the fine, the Commission could also tell Google to stop its anti-competitive practices.
Bad Google.
Now about that shopping service. The service is number one with a bullet when I searched Google for “Google Shopping.” In case you have never looked at this service, you can navigate to the site by clicking on the image below:
What’s available to me in rural Kentucky? I ran a query for PCI eSATA RAID cards and here are the results:
That first result is not a card; it is a rack mounted one mu uninterruptable power supply. Not exactly a PCI card.
The other results were not too useful. None of the items was a PCI RAID card. (I know these exist because there is one in my server named Fred.)
From a practical point of view, Google Shopping does not seem to meet my needs. With the alleged $9 billion fine hanging over the GOOG, I wonder if any of the lawyers involved in this have checked out the service.
Google Shopping is, in my opinion, not going to lure me from sites which deliver on point results for the type of stuff I buy. Maybe Google makes oodles from one mu rack mounted UPS devices, but offering that product just drives me to Pricewatch.com.
Your mileage may vary. It certainly does for the folks in Europe it seems. What about Amazon? Guess that service is less of an offender. Surprising.
Stephen E Arnold, June 7, 2017
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