Google rubbishes EU claims of Anti-Competitive practices in online shopping

By tech2 News Staff /  04 Nov 2016 , 09:19

Google has called EU objections to its improved shopping results in searches as baseless. The European Commission had accused Google of using its dominant position to take business away from price comparison and price aggregating sites, based on complaints it had received from these sites. Google contends that the most dominant position is held by Amazon itself, which competes for traffic with price aggregation sites more than Google does.

The counter argument was that as Amazon pays these sites for listings, it should not be considered as a competition. Google provided data to show that a staggering majority of users start shopping online by checking the prices on Amazon, irrespective of whether or not they end up making a purchase from the site. Google came in a second place for users looking for prices, and only a fraction of users opted to check price comparison sites.

Google also alleges that most of the shopping activity is conducted through native apps on smartphones. Google claims that it has improved its search results to deliver ads with pictures and prices, a process that helps Google, its partnered advertisers as well as the end users.

Google claims there is no relation between the evolution of its search engine, and the performance of price comparison sites.

EU antitrust regulators order Google to cease anti-competitive practices with Android, large fine expected

#GOOGLE ANTI-TRUST

Not that kind of L, we hope (Original Image: CBS Interactive)

  02 Oct 2016 , 10:28

EU antitrust regulators plan to order Alphabet’s Google to stop paying financial incentives to smartphone makers to pre-install Google Search exclusively on their devices and warned the company of a large fine, an EU document showed.

The document, running to more than 150 pages, was sent to complainants last week for feedback. Google received a copy in April in which the