Margarethe Vestager (Photo : Twitter)
Google is facing record-breaking anti-trust fines in Europe for monopoly abuse related to the company's popular search engine. European Union (EU) officials in Brussels are wrapping up a seven-year investigation of the Alphabet company.
Within weeks the European Commission will hit Google with a fine of about $3.4 billion. That penalty would easily break the current all-time highest anti-trust fine of $1.2 billion handed to chip giant Intel.
The maximum possible penalty would be about $7.5 billion, which is a one-tenth of Google's yearly sales.
EU officials reportedly hope to announce the Google fines before the summer break, according to The Telegraph. They could be made public next month.
The record-breaking fine would be an historical event in US tech companies' competition fights with Brussels. Google has already been charged with advertising its price-comparison search in the general results of the search engine, and down-grading services of small companies.
European officials are also investigating Google for other monopoly abuse. It involves software for Android smartphones.
Legal experts shared that the fine Google faces over shopping comparison could factor in the fact that the tech giant has abused its web search monopoly for several years. Google also changed its search algorithms during the EU's investigation, which made it tougher for rival companies.
In addition, Google will be banned from tweaking search results to benefit itself and harm competing companies. It offered to redesign its search results' presentation but the idea was rejected.
Google argued that since Amazon and eBay are succeeding online competitive is healthy. However, the fines of Competition Commission Margarethe Vestager oppose Google's arguments.
In related news, Google is battling Oracle over its Android OS written in the language Java created by Sun Microsystems. When Oracle bought Sun it also secured Java and its copyrighted application program interfaces (API).
Oracle claims Google has no legal rights to use Java APIs for Android. However, the Alphabet company argues that Java APIs used for Android are fair use since Java is open. In fact, Google's lawyer referred to it as a "gift" to the world from Sun, according to The Next Web.
Meanwhile, Oracle's lawyers are arguing Google has made "fair use" of the APIs confusing.
