Today, the European Commission announced a record €2.42 billion fine against Google, alleging it abused its dominant market position in search to harm competing services.
The following can be attributed to Public Knowledge President and CEO Gene Kimmelman:
“All competition authorities should take questions of platform dominance seriously. Although we are not in a position to assess the merits of this particular case, we appreciate the European Commission focusing on these important issues. In these types of cases, antitrust officials must ensure that no company use its market power to foreclose competition, or to leverage its success in one market to gain an unfair advantage in another.
“This case is likely to have much wider implications than the comparison shopping dispute highlighted in the Commission’s statement. We believe effective antitrust enforcement must offer marketplace solutions that benefit consumers and enable competition and innovation to flourish. However this case is ultimately resolved, we believe it is critical that any online platform with excessive market power should not be allowed to discriminate unfairly against competitors while being allowed to develop product and service innovations that benefit consumers.
“We hope the European Commission and U.S. enforcement agencies make sure that any remedies they impose in such cases deliver these benefits to consumers and that they work closely together to prevent divergence in digital platform opportunities for consumers in the U.S., Europe and globally.”
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