Google paid the European Commission $9.5 billion in fines from 2017 to 2019.
Over the last three years, Google has paid the European Commission slightly above $9.5 billion in fines. The latest fine (March, 2019) slapped by the Commission was related to Google’s advertising practices. According to Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, incharge of EU’s competition policy,
“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. Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules. 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.”
Other fines imposed by EU on Google:
June 2017:
The Commission fined Google €2.42 billion ($2.7 billion) for abuse of its dominance as a search engine and giving priority to its own comparison shopping service which according to the commission is an illegal advantage. According to the EC, Google’s illegal practices allowed its comparison shopping service to gain traffic significantly at the expense of its rivals and to the detriment of the European consumers. Google had entered the European comparison shopping market with Froogle which was renamed “Google Product Search” in 2008 and “Google Shopping” in 2013. EC’s press release in 2017 stated that Google started pushing the strategy of demoting its rivals in search results and systematically prioritizing its own comparison shopping service since 2008.
July 2018:
The European Commisson fined Google €4.34 billion ($5 billion) for the abuse of the dominance of Android operating system to gain illegal advantage and strengthen the dominance of its search engine on mobile devices. According to the EC, Google imposed illegal restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile network operators since 2011 for strengthening its position in internet search.
In the July 2018 case, Commissioner Margrethe Vestager noted that Google had placed three types of restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile network operators to ensure that the traffic originating from Android mobile devices went to google search engine. These restrictions were:
Preinstall Google search and Chrome browser apps as a condition for licensing Google’s PlayStore.
Google made payments to certain Android device manufacturers and mobile network operators for preinstalling the Google search app.
It prevented manufacturers wishing to preinstall Google apps from selling even a single mobile device with alternative Android versions that were not approved by Google (Android Forks).
Here is how much Google has paid the EC since 2017 in millions of US dollars.
EC Fines by Year
2017 – $2,736 million
2018 – $5,071 million
2019 – $1,697 million
Total – $9,504 million