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Google hit with £1.3BILLION mega-fine by EU for ‘abusing its dominant position’ – but it’ll take just five days to pay off
A third major fine has been handed down to the Californian tech giant
GOOGLE has been fined a staggering £1.28billion by the EU for "abusing its dominant position".
It's the third time the European Union has hit Google with a major anti-trust fine, marking an ongoing crackdown on the firm.
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Google EU fine – does it really hurt Google?
But it's a small sum for a global tech giant like Google.
In 2018, Google's parent company Alphabet turned over an enormous $136.82billion – that's about £103billion.
That means Alphabet generates about £282.2million a day.
So Alphabet will be able to pay off the EU's fine in 4.5 days – less than a working week.
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Even if you only look at Alphabet's profit, it's still a quick pay-off.
Alphabet made $30.74billion (£22.2billion) in profit last year, or about £60.2million a day.
That means Google could use its profits alone to pay the fine off in just over 20 days – that's less than a month.
The fine was handed down for breaching EU antitrust rules.
According to the EU, Google imposed restrictive contracts on third-party websites, allegedly in a bid to stop Google's rivals from placing search adverts on those same websites.
"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," said Margrethe Vestager, who heads up competition policy.
"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."
Has Google been fined previously?
Here's what you need to know...
This is actually the third fine handed down to Google by the EU.
The first came in June 2017, when Google was fined £2.08billion for abusing its dominance as a search engine, by giving an illegal advantage to Google's own comparison shopping service.
And in July 2018, the EU fined Google for a further £3.73billion for illegal practices regarding Android mobile devices, which strengthened the dominance of its search engine.
What did Google do wrong according to the EU?
Lots of websites – like news sites, blogs and travel aggregators – often have search functions.
When users search using this feature, the website delivers search results, as well as some search adverts.
Google has a tool called AdSense for Search, which provides search adverts to owners of these "publisher"; websites.
The tech giant works as a middle-man between advertisers and website owners – and is the biggest player in the market in the EU, holding a 70% share of the industry.
And according to the EU, Google has been placing exclusivity clauses in contracts.
These would prevent websites from placing search adverts from competitors, and were in place as early as 2006.
Google later changed this in March 2009, forcing publishers simply to reserve the most profitable space on their pages for Google's adverts.
The contracts also imposed a minimum number of Google ads.
And Google also forced publishers to seek written approval from Google before making changes to the way in which rival ads were displayed.
This is in breach of the EU's anti-trust rules, which explains the fine.
In a statement given to The Sun, Google's Kent Walker said: "We’ve always agreed that healthy, thriving markets are in everyone’s interest.
"We've already made a wide range of changes to our products to address the Commission's concerns.
"Over the next few months, we’ll be making further updates to give more visibility to rivals in Europe."
The EU says that Google stopped its illegal practices in July 2016.
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