Brussels (ANSA) – Despite the pressures from the Trump administration, the European Union strikes another blow to the Big Tech companies from the United States. Once again, Google is under the microscope in Brussels, recently fined by the EU Antitrust for the advertising empire built around its search engine.
The Commission has decided to launch an investigation to assess whether the Mountain View giant has penalized news publishers in violation of the European Digital Markets Act (DMA) aimed at countering anti-competitive practices of large online platforms designated as ‘gatekeepers’.
“We are concerned that Google’s policies do not allow news publishers to be treated fairly, reasonably, and non-discriminatorily in search results,” explained Teresa Ribera, Vice President of the Commission responsible for competition, promising to investigate to “ensure that news publishers do not lose important revenue at a difficult time for the sector” and that “Google complies with the European Digital Markets Act.”
Essentially, the Berlaymont Palace contests the impact on publishing of Mountain View’s policy on the abuse of site reputation, a policy with which the tech giant aims to protect users from spam, countering practices aimed at manipulating rankings in search results.
According to the Commission, however, this anti-spam policy would end up downgrading websites and media content in search results when such websites include content from commercial partners. A downgrade that in turn translates into reduced traffic and thus a significant loss of revenue for publishers and third-party content providers.
In case of violation, Google risks fines of up to 10% of its global revenue and up to 20% in case of recidivism. And if the violation is systematic, the Commission can also adopt additional corrective measures, such as the obligation to sell a business or parts of it or the prohibition of acquiring additional services related to systemic non-compliance. Google’s immediate response labeled the investigation as “misleading” and “unfounded” and it has again attacked the DMA for making “Search” less useful for businesses and European users.
The investigation risks “harming millions of European users,” warned the American giant, recalling that “a German court has already dismissed a similar appeal, ruling that our anti-spam policy was valid, reasonable, and applied consistently” (November 13).
