Google fined $2.7B by European Commission for abusing search monopoly

EU also rules that Google must stop demoting competitors in search results.

Google has been gut-punched by the European Commission for abusing its search monopoly to squeeze out other players on the Web. Europe's competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, had been expected to hit Google with a fine of around €1 billion, but the actual number is far larger: €2.42 billion, the largest anti-monopoly fine ever issued.

In addition to the fine, Google will be required to change its search algorithm so that every competing service is fairly crawled, indexed, ranked, and displayed. If Google fails to remedy its anti-competitive conduct within 90 days, it will face daily penalty payments of up to 5 percent of the daily worldwide turnover of Google's parent company Alphabet. The commission's full statement on the decision makes for quite damning reading.

Google, as reported by the AFP news agency, "respectfully disagrees" with the EU's fine and is considering an appeal. We have asked Google for comment and will update this story when it responds.

The original complaint against Google was brought by UK comparison shopping site Foundem in 2009, and by 2010 the commission confirmed it was investigating alleged antitrust violations by Google. The commission formally issued a Statement of Objections (SO) against Google in April 2015 and has apparently spent the last couple of years working out how hard to hit Google.

The commission's investigation primarily sought to uncover whether Google's search results systematically boosted the rankings of its other products—Google Shopping, for example—unfairly squeezing out companies that offer similar services to Google. Google's most recent public rebuttal was in November 2016, saying that improving the quality of search results isn't anti-competitive.

The European Commission has the power to issue fines of up to 10 percent of a company's global revenues, though the largest monopoly-oriented fine before today was €1.06 billion for Intel in 2008, or roughly 3 percent of Intel's revenues at the time. €2.4 billion is again about 3 percent of Google's global turnover.

For more information, read our in-depth explainer on the long-running Google vs. Europe anti-monopoly case.