Google has been instructed to pay an enormous fine of 2.4 billion pounds for misusing its market power in its shopping comparison service, according to a report. After a 15-year legal fight started by British couple Shivaun and Adam Raff, Google's search algorithm was found to have unfairly penalized their price comparison website, Foundem, in a groundbreaking decision.
As per BBC's report, the technology company challenged the fine imposed by the European Commission in 2017 at the European Court of Justice, but the appeal was denied last month.
The beginning of everything
The Raffs left their jobs in 2006 to start Foundem, a platform for users to compare prices of electronics, flights, and more. The couple claims that Google quickly demoted Foundem in search results for key terms such as "price comparison" and "comparison shopping".
Adam states that they were keeping an eye on their pages' rankings and suddenly noticed a significant drop in all of them. At first, we believed it was collateral damage, that we had been mistakenly identified as spam. Shivaun states that they believed they needed to take the issue to the appropriate level and it would be resolved.
The couple's website, which collected a fee for customers clicking on product listings redirecting to other sites, had difficulty generating revenue. Adam states that if you are rejected traffic, then you shouldn't be in business. It was reported that the pair made several requests to Google to remove the restriction, but their efforts were unsuccessful, leading them to suspect foul play by the end of 2008. They were informed that their website had unexpectedly started taking longer to load.
Adam explains that although the couple initially believed it was a cyber attack, it turned out that the increase in traffic to their website was the actual cause.
Google's perspective on the matter
A Google representative mentioned that the CJEU ruling [in 2024] specifically pertains to “the way we displayed product outcomes between 2008 and 2017.”
The modifications implemented in 2017 to meet the requirements of the European Commission's Shopping ruling have been effective for over seven years, resulting in billions of clicks for 800+ comparison shopping services. The spokesperson stated that they will keep challenging Foundem's claims in court.