The EU antitrust regulators are expected to impose a record fine on Google for search engine manipulation to favour its own services, Reuters reports.

An unprecedented fine is expected to be announced on Tuesday.

Following a two years investigation, the EU’s anti-trust authority has concluded that Google manipulated search engine results to favour AlphabetAlphabet, Google, its own shopping service unit. The search engine manipulation is said to have hurt both rivals and consumers.

Companies guilty of violating EU antitrust law can be fined up to 10% of their global turnover, which corresponds to little over €8bn for Google. The company must also ensure equal treatment in internet shopping results. </s> Google was hit by a record-breaking fine for antitrust violations in Europe today. The European Commission will levy a €2.42 billion ($2.7 billion) penalty on the tech giant, far surpassing the €1.06 billion fine slapped on Intel in 2009, the previous record. Under EU law, a maximum fine of 10% of annual revenues can be levied for antitrust misdeeds; that would have translated to $9 billion, based on Google parent company Alphabet’s 2016 revenues, so it could have been even worse.

Even before the massive fine was announced, the jockeying over how to frame the punishment was underway. A draft letter is being circulated in Washington, DC, that claims the EU is “unfairly targeting” American companies, according to the Financial Times (paywall). Although the letter is in the Consumer Technology Association’s name, a senior Google lobbyist had been reportedly promoting it to lawmakers. The tech firm later distanced itself from the letter, the FT reported. Quartz has contacted Google for comment. No other companies have signed the letter yet, the FT says.

Opposing Google’s effort is a group of American companies, including tech heavyweight Oracle, who have published their own letter, welcoming the commission’s action and dispelling the anti-American argument, Recode reported. The fine is “necessary and appropriate, not provincial,” the letter reads. “We have watched Google undermine competition in the United States and abroad,” it continues. The signatories include News Corp. and Yelp, in addition to Oracle, all of whom have lodged complaints against Google with the commission in the past.

The long-running Google case, which began in 2010, centers on allegedly anti-competitive practices by the search giant around its shopping service. The commission says Google unfairly favors its own shopping search results; Google denies any wrongdoing. According to Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition:

The shopping case is just one of three outstanding antitrust investigations against Google in Europe. The other two focus on how Google distributes its Android mobile operating system and the terms it offers to websites displaying its ads. Those cases could also have blockbuster fines attached to them when they finally conclude.

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EU antitrust regulators are likely to impose a record fine on Alphabet unit Google over its shopping service as soon as Tuesday, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday, concluding one of three cases against the company.

The European Commission's case was triggered by scores of complaints from both U.S. and European rivals, leading to a seven-year-long investigation into the world's most popular internet search engine.

The EU competition authority charged Google in April 2015 with distorting internet search results to favor its shopping service, harming both rivals and consumers.

Google said: "We continue to engage constructively with the European Commission and we believe strongly that our innovations in online shopping have been good for shoppers, retailers and competition."

The company has said regulators ignored competition from online retailers Amazon and eBay Inc.

Reuters exclusively reported on June 1 that the EU competition enforcer aimed to sanction the company before the summer break in August.

Companies found guilty of infringing EU antitrust rules can be fined as much as 10 percent of their global turnover, which in Google's case could be about $9 billion of its 2016 turnover but it is not expected to reach this level.

A 1.06 billion euro fine handed down to U.S. chipmaker Intel in 2009 is the highest to date.

Apart from the fine, the Commission will tell Google to stop its alleged anti-competitive practices but it is not clear what measures it will order the company to adopt to ensure that rivals get equal treatment in internet shopping results.

The Commission's tough line is in sharp contrast with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission which settled its own web search case with the company in 2013 by requiring Google to stop "scraping" reviews and other data from rival websites for its own products. </s> European Union regulators slapped Google with a record €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion) antitrust fine on Tuesday, the latest broadside fired at big American tech companies doing business in the region.

The European Commission found that the U.S. tech giant denied "consumers a genuine choice" by using its search engine to unfairly steer them to its own shopping platform.

Regulators said that Google must change its behavior within 90 days or face additional penalties.

"What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules," said Margrethe Vestager, the bloc's top antitrust official. "It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation."

Google (GOOGL) said in a statement that it tries to show ads in ways that are helpful for buyers and sellers.

"We respectfully disagree with the conclusions announced today," a Google spokesperson said. "We will review the Commission's decision in detail as we consider an appeal, and we look forward to continuing to make our case."

The Commission said that Google acted illegally by giving priority placement in search results to its own shopping service, while relegating results from rivals to areas where potential buyers were much less likely to click.

It could have fined Google as much as 10% of its annual sales, or roughly $9 billion.

The $2.7 billion fine represents just over 2.5% of Google's revenue last year and Alphabet, Google's owner, had $92.4 billion in cash as of end of March.

Vestager said Google's competitors could claim compensation in national courts within the EU. She said hundreds of companies, including some based in the U.S., complained about the way Google displayed its shopping service.

Shares in Alphabet dropped by 1.2% in premarket trading.

Tuesday's fine dwarfs the previous EU record antitrust penalty of €1.06 billion ($1.2 billion) imposed on Intel (INTC) in 2009. Intel has been fighting to overturn that decision ever since.

Google's regulatory headache in Europe doesn't end with the online shopping case, which dates back to 2010.

The EU has also accused the Silicon Valley titan of abusing its market position by imposing restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile network operators.

It is also investigating the company's ad placing service, AdSense.

Related: Nike is the next U.S. company in Europe's crosshairs

American firms have come under increased scrutiny in Europe on issues related to tax and competition.

Apple (AAPL) is fighting a European demand that it repay €13 billion ($14.7 billion) in back taxes to the Irish government.

Facebook (FB) was fined by antitrust regulators in May for misleading officials over its takeover of messaging service WhatsApp. The same month, Amazon (AMZN) agreed to change its distribution agreements with e-book publishers to address antitrust concerns raised by the Commission.

And in early June, antitrust officials launched investigations into claims that Nike (NKE) may have broken EU laws by restricting how traders can sell licensed merchandise. Comcast's (CCV) Universal Studios is being investigated on the same grounds.

Vestager rejected any suggestion of anti-American bias, telling reporters on Tuesday that an analysis of investigations her department has launched found that U.S. companies were not being disproportionately targeted.

-- Paul R. La Monica contributed reporting. </s> The European Commission has hit Google with another large fine, this time €1.49 billion ($1.69 billion) for engaging in anti-competitive practices with its advertising tool AdSense.

Google was found guilty of breaking antitrust laws by blocking third party rivals from using AdSense to display advertisements. This is the third fine the Commission has levelled against Google in the last couple of years, but this most recent one is less than a third of the previous record fine for other antitrust violations.
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The fine is for Google's activities in relation to AdSense between 2006 and 2016. In response to Europe's investigation the company has already opened up AdSense to allows rivals to display ads. Google is said to have "cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites".

European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, shared news of the fine in a tweet.

Today the Commission has fined Google €1.49 billion for illegal misuse of its dominant position in the market for the brokering of online search adverts. The misconduct lasted over 10 years and denied other companies the possibility to compete on the merits and to innovate -- and consumers the benefits of competition.

Google is expected to appeal against the fine. </s> The European Commission has fined Google $5 billion for violating EU antitrust laws — specifically, by forcing manufacturers of Android phones to pre-install the Google search app and the Chrome web browser.

"Google has used Android as a vehicle to cement the dominance of its search engine," Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. "These practices have denied rivals the chance to innovate and compete on the merits."

The tech giant plans to appeal the decision, a spokesperson tells NPR.

Last year, the European Commission fined Google $2.72 billion for antitrust violations. That time, it found Google was using its search service to improperly promote its shopping service. </s> Google has been hit with a new antitrust fine from the European Union totaling €1.5 billion.

In a press conference this morning, EU antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager said that the tech giant had abused its dominant position by forcing customers of its AdSense business to sign contracts stating they would not accept advertising from rival search engines. Said Vestager: “The misconduct lasted over 10 years and denied other companies the possibility to compete on the merits and to innovate.”

Google has been fined $9.3 billion by the EU over the last three years

The fine is the third major penalty the EU has levied against the tech giant in as many years, and closes its last open probe of the firm. Google was fined a record €4.3 billion last year for abusing its market dominance in mobile, and €2.4 billion the year before that for manipulating shopping search results. Google is currently appealing both cases.

With the new penalty, Google’s total EU antitrust bill now stands at €8.2 billion ($9.3 billion). Today’s fine was lower than the previous two as Google actively worked with the European Commission to change its AdSense policies after the EU announced its case in 2016.

The policy under scrutiny dates back to 2006. Then, Google started selling customers its AdSense for Search product. This let companies like retailers and newspapers place a Google search box on their website. When visitors used the search box, Google showed them ads and split the commission with the website’s owners.

But, Google also made customers sign contracts forbidding them from including rival search engines on their sites alongside Google’s own. In 2009, Google allowed the inclusion of rival search engines as long as Google’s was more prominent. In 2016, around the time the EU announced its case, the company removed these terms altogether.

This climb-down reflects, in part, AdSense’s diminishing importance for Google. The business was a steady earner, but never a major component of the company’s revenue. According to Bloomberg, AdSense contributed less than 20 percent of the company’s income in 2015 and has declined ever since. “If you look at the annual reports, AdSense is less and less relevant,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Aitor Ortiz told the publication.

During the press conference this morning, commissioner Vestager also offered updates on Google’s responses to its other antitrust fines. For example, with regards to its manipulation of shopping search results, Vestager said that changes Google made after the EU’s case increased the visibility of rivals from 6 percent of search results to 40 percent.

Vestager also noted that in response to the antitrust case made against Android, Google has decided this week to give users a choice about the browser and search engine they use on their phones (rather than simply pre-installing Google’s own services).

The EU praised Google’s response to the Android antitrust case

“We’ve seen in the past that a choice screen can be an effective way to promote user choice,” said Vestager. “It is welcome that Google is stepping up its effort and we will watch closely to see how the choice-screen mechanism evolves.”

Although today’s fine brings an end to EU’s current trilogy of open probes, the organization is still looking at a number of other areas of Google’s business and could open new cases in future. Vestager mentioned the search market for jobs and local listings as areas of scrutiny.

“We keep getting complaints from people who are concerned about how these markets work, so we will keep doing our job,” said Vestager. “For me, the most important thing here is to enable user choice.” </s> European Union regulators hit Google with a $1.68-billion US fine on Wednesday for abusing its dominant role in online advertising.

It's the third time the commission has slapped Google with an antitrust penalty, following multibillion-dollar fines resulting from separate probes into two other parts of the Silicon Valley giant's business.

The EU's competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, announced the results of the long-running probe of Google's AdSense advertising business at a news conference in Brussels on Wednesday.

"Today's decision is about how Google abused its dominance to stop websites using brokers other than the AdSense platform," Vestager said.

The commission found Google and its parent company, Alphabet, breached EU antitrust rules by imposing restrictive clauses in contracts with websites that used AdSense, preventing Google rivals from placing their ads on these sites.

Google "prevented its rivals from having a chance to innovate and to compete in the market on their merits," Vestager said. "Advertisers and website owners, they had less choice and likely faced higher prices that would be passed on to consumers."

AdSense is an older Google product that lets web publishers such as bloggers place text ads on their websites, with the content of the ads based on results from search functions on their sites.

Microsoft filed an EU antitrust complaint about the service in 2009 and the EU Commission formally launched its probe in 2016, although it said at the time that Google had already made some changes to allow affected customers more freedom to show competing ads.

Last year, Vestager hit the company with a record $5-illion fine following an investigation into its Android operating system. In 2017, she fined Google $2.75 billion in a case involving its online shopping search results. </s> BRUSSELS—The European Union’s antitrust watchdog will as soon as Tuesday hit Alphabet Inc.’s Google with a fine of more than €1 billion ($1.12 billion) and demand changes to the company’s business practices, according to people familiar with the matter.

The European Commission, which has for roughly seven years been investigating Google GOOGL, +0.97% GOOG, +0.89% for breaching the bloc’s antitrust rules in various areas, is poised to announce as soon as Tuesday that Google has manipulated search results to favor its own comparison-shopping service. Other formal EU probes into Google’s behaviors with its Android mobile-operating service and AdSense advertising service are continuing.

The antitrust penalty against Google is expected to surpass the EU’s previous record fine imposed on a company for allegedly abusing its market position: €1.06 billion against Intel Corp. INTC, -0.49% in 2009.

“We continue to engage constructively with the European Commission and we believe strongly that our innovations in online shopping have been good for shoppers, retailers and competition,” said Google spokesman Al Verney.

The EU will also likely demand Google give rival comparison shopping services such as Foundem.co.uk and Kelkoo.com Ltd. equal treatment in its search results. Complainants in the case allege that Google both demotes competitors’ offerings in search rankings and artificially inserts its own service in a box above all other search results, regardless of their relevance.

An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.

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The European Commission imposes a record €2.42bn antitrust fine on internet giant Google for allegedly manipulating its search engine results.