Gadgetory

Google has been hit with a massive 2.7 billion dollar fine by the European Union it's the biggest antitrust penalty the EU has ever given to a single company and totally eclipses the 1 billion dollar slap on the wrist for Intel in 2009 Google breached antitrust rules by favoring its own comparison-shopping service if you ever wondered why Google Shopping links would appear at the top of search results and rivals much lower down the page you saw this practice firsthand now under the EU rules it's not illegal to have market dominance but if you are a big company you're not supposed to restrict competition this ruling came after a 7 year investigation and the commissioner said quote Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison-shopping service in its search results and demoting those of competitors unquote Google now has to stop the practice within 90 days otherwise it faces penalty payments of up to 5% of the worldwide daily turnover of its parent company alphabet and this could just be the start of the search giant's troubles because the EU is also investigating Android if Google is found to be crushing competition by forcing Google services to be pre-installed on Android phones it could mean even more fines I'm Alexis Avedis and you can search out more tech news at cnet.com