Alphabet's Google Responds to EU Antitrust Fine
31 October 2017 - 6:05AM
Dow Jones News
By Natalia Drozdiak
BRUSSELS -- Alphabet Inc.'s Google lashed out against the
European Union over its recent record EUR2.42 billion antitrust
fine against the company, saying the regulator misstated facts and
didn't show sufficient proof that the search giant's conduct hurt
rivals, according to a summary of the court appeal the company
lodged against the EU.
Google filed its appeal to the EU court in September, but
details of the company's arguments were published Monday in the
EU's official journal.
The search giant is contesting the regulator's decision from
late June, in which the EU accused Google of abusing the power of
its dominant search engine by discriminating against rival
comparison-shopping sites in search rankings. Along with the fine,
the regulator also ordered the tech giant to revamp its search
results in Europe.
Google has to comply with the decision despite its appeal at the
EU's top courts, which could take years to play out.
In its appeal to the court, Google argues the EU distorted the
facts and erred in its analysis related to the company's shopping
ads, which often appear atop search results when a user searches
for a product, like "gas grill."
The EU says those ads, which appear before other search results,
illegally disadvantage other comparison-shopping services, whose
results appear lower down. Google said the EU erred in finding that
"treating product results and generic results differently involved
favoring, when there was no discrimination."
The regulator also doesn't demonstrate in its decision that the
company's conduct decreased search traffic to rivals, Google said,
nor does the EU take account of competition from merchant
platforms, like eBay Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.
In its decision in June, the EU said that Google's behavior gave
it a 45-fold traffic increase in the U.K. and a 35-fold increase in
Germany since 2008, while demotions applied in Google's generic
search algorithms led to sudden drops of traffic to rivals of 85%
in the U.K. and 92% in Germany.
The EU at the time also said it considered Google and other
comparison shopping websites separate from Amazon and eBay, which
sell products directly on their website.
Google also said the EU's record fine was "unwarranted" because
the regulator based its case on a "novel theory" and had previously
sought to settle the case with Google. Google for years haggled
with the previous antitrust commissioner Joaquín Almunia about how
to present search results in Europe in various attempts at a
settlement with the regulator. Those attempts ultimately were
rejected by the EU because the bloc sought more concessions from
the company, paving the way for the regulator to lodge formal
charges against Google.
"The commission will defend its decision in court," an EU
spokeswoman said Monday.
Write to Natalia Drozdiak at natalia.drozdiak@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 30, 2017 14:50 ET (18:50 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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