Since 2019, Google has received a multitude of fines from the European Commission, EU member countries and also from other countries for all kinds of reasons and products. Specifically, the platform has received seven fines in the last four years for a total value of 9,274 million euros.
2017: Google Shopping
Google started the season of fines in the EU with that of Google shopping, when he received a fine of 2,420 million euros for abusing its dominant position and offering its own Shopping search results ahead of the competition. Google did not penalize its links, which it did with the competition. The investigation started in 2010, and after seven years, the EU decided to fine them.
2018: Android dominant position
In July 2018, Google received the largest sanction in history for a company, where the European Commission fined them with 4,340 million euros for abusing a dominant position for forcing mobile phone manufacturers to pre-install Google apps. Among those apps we find the company’s Play Store, as well as the Chrome browser.
In addition, Google used Android as a vehicle to consolidate the dominance of its search engine, preventing competitors from growing. This fine was the reason that, when we set up a new mobile on Android, we now have to choose the default search engine for the mobile.
2019: Google AdSense
Less than a year later, the European Commission published the resolution of the Adsense case, with a fine of 1,490 million euros to Google for abuse of a dominant position in the Internet advertising market. AdSense acts as an intermediary between web portals and advertisers, placing advertising on webs based on the interests of users, and also keeping the most lucrative webs.
In 2019, Google was also fined 154 million euros for collecting videos of children without parental permission or knowledge.
500 million from France for the news
The last big fine that Google received in the European Union was last July, where France fined them with 500 million euros for not negotiating in good faith a correct compensation for the French media for the use of its contents. Google obtains profit by positioning the results in its search engine through News or Discover without having to elaborate any content.
2021 starts strong
In 2021, Google has also received other fines. In February, she was fined 1.1 million euros for offering misleading hotel rankings in the search engine. In April, France also fined them € 220 million for abuse of position in the advertising services market. Another from the Italian government of 100 million euros for abuse of dominant position.
The latest: 150 million in South Korea
Last Tuesday, South Korea imposed a fine of about 150 million euros to Google for the agreements it had with manufacturers in the country such as Samsung or LG. These agreements prevented manufacturers from developing their own Android-based operating systems, or modify them to the point of being able to generate compatibility problems.
Therefore, Google has already had to pay 8.9 billion euros in fines, and those of 2021 are still recurring. However, everything indicates that they will also have to pay them, so the final figure will amount to 9,375 million euros.
