Google To Pay 2.4 Billion Pounds After Losing Case Against Foundem

Google To Pay 2.4 Billion Pounds After Losing Case Against Foundem

The landmark ruling comes after a 15-year legal battle

The European Court of Justice has ordered Google to pay a fine of 2.4 billion pounds (Rs.26,172 crore) for abusing its market dominance by unfairly penalizing Foundem.

The tech giant had appealed before the top court against the fine, originally levied by the European Commission in 2017, but the appeal was rejected in October.

The matter was initiated by a UK couple, Shivaun and Adam Raff, whose price comparison website, Foundem, was unfairly penalized by Google's search algorithm.

In 2006, the Raffs quit their jobs to launch Foundem to allow users to compare prices of flights, electronics, and other items.

However, the couple claimed that Google promptly pushed their website down the lists of search results for relevant queries including ‘price comparison’ and ‘comparison shopping’.

Adam remarked, "We were monitoring our pages and how they were ranking, and then we saw them all plummet almost immediately.”

Shivaun added, "Initially, we thought this was collateral damage, that we had been false positive detected as spam. We assumed escalating to the right place, and it would be overturned.”

Foundem charged a fee when customers clicked on their product listings through other websites. However, it struggled to succeed. As Adam said, "If you're denied traffic, you have no business.”

The couple requested Google repeatedly to lift the restriction but failed. By the end of 2008, they suspected foul play and were told that their website had suddenly become slow.

Though the duo thought it was a cyber-attack, "it was just that everyone started visiting our website," Adam apprised.

However, a Google spokesperson said that the judgment related to "how we showed product results from 2008-2017."

He added, “The changes we made in 2017 to comply with the European Commission's shopping decision worked successfully for over seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services. Therefore, we continue to strongly contest Foundem’s claims and will do so when the case is considered by the courts.”