“Google will on Wednesday be accused by Brussels of illegally abusing its dominance of search in Europe, a step that ultimately could force it to change its business model fundamentally and pay hefty fines,” Alex Barker, Christian Oliver and Anne-Sylvaine Chassany report for The Financial Times.
“Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner, is to say that the US group will soon be served with a formal charge sheet alleging that it breached antitrust rules by diverting traffic from rivals to favour its own services, according to two people familiar with the case,” Barker, Oliver, and Chassany report. “Serving Google with a so-called statement of objections will be the opening salvo in one of the defining antitrust cases of the internet era. It could prove as epic as the decade-long battle with Microsoft that ultimately cost the company €2bn in fines.”
“The company could still seek to settle the case even after the charges are brought. It could take at least a year and probably longer for the commission to make a final decision,” Barker, Oliver, and Chassany report. “Google would probably challenge any ruling that goes against it through the European courts, opening a legal war that could run for years.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, this will all work out so that competition can flourish where it currently might not fully do so in some areas.