Google has been fined a whopping 2.4 billion pounds (about Rs 26,172 crore) for misusing its shopping comparison service. This case is 15 years old and about a couple from England named Shivon and Adam Raff. The couple had a price comparison website named Foundem on Google which was severely penalized by Google’s search engine. According to a BBC report, in 2017 Google had appealed against the fine imposed by the European Commission, but last month the European Court of Justice, Europe’s top court, rejected this appeal.
How Everything Started:
Raff launched a website called Foundem in 2006, to allow users to compare electronics, flights, and other items. He even quit his job to launch Foundem. He and Shivon say that Foundem was soon placed low in Google’s search results list for relevant queries such as “price comparison” and “comparison shopping”.We were monitoring our pages and seeing how they were ranking, and then we saw them all drop almost immediately,” Raff said. “Initially we thought it was kind of a loss because we were getting false positives as spam. We thought we just had to do our due diligence and it would change.
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This meant that the couple’s website, which charged customers for clicking on their product listings on other websites, now struggled to make money. “If you’re denied traffic, you have no business,” says Raff. The couple sent multiple requests to Google to remove the ban from their website in late 2008 but to no avail. Then they were told that their website had suddenly started loading very slowly. The couple thought it might be a cyber attack but Ruff said that in reality, it was just that everyone was visiting their website.
What Does Google Say:
A Google spokesperson said the CJEU’s decision in 2024 only relates to “how we displayed product results during 2008-2017”. The spokesperson added: “The changes we made in 2017 to comply with the European Commission’s Shopping decision have worked successfully for over seven years, delivering billions of clicks to over 800 comparison services. For this reason, we strongly oppose the claims made by Foundem and will continue to do so while the courts consider the case.”
