Google has once again become a topic of discussion, as several European competitors in the online shopping sector sent a letter to competition regulator Europe's and accused the company of unfair competition .
According to Reuters, the letter was sent to the European Competition Commission's vice-president, Margrethe Vestager, and stated that Google had not complied with her (Vestager's) request, which said the company must stop favoring its own service , Google Shopping, over competitors.
In 2017, Vestager imposed a fine of 2.42 billion euros on Google for exploiting the popularity of its search engine to promote services .
Last year, Google received another fine (1.5 billion euros) for abusing its dominance in online advertising.
The current complaint was filed by 41 opponents of Google Shopping. Meanwhile, Vestager and her team were already investigating the possibility of favorable promotion of another Google service, Google for Jobs, and found that the company was using unfair competition in that case as well.
The complaint came from various shopping services in Europe (from Spain, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, etc.).
The founders of the British agency Foundem, Adam and Shivaun Raff, were the main accusers of Google over Google Shopping.
The companies that signed the letter claim that they are "threatened by Google as the company does not comply with the law."
Google claims to be compliant with EU requirements.
However, the 41 companies claim that Google's practices will drive other shopping services out of the market.
“Google continues to rate and display its shopping service more favorably than competing services on its search pages, so the abuse has never stopped,” the companies said.
The companies also said that Google's alleged efforts to present its practices as compliant with the competition commission's requirements make things worse for its competitors.
Google said the 41 companies that sent the letter to the European Commission represent only 6.8% of the total number of online shopping services. It also said the changes the company has made have helped many services and do not only benefit Google Shopping.
