by Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – More than 40 European competitors to Google Shopping urged European Union antitrust regulators on Monday to use newly approved technical rules to ensure the Alphabet unit (NASDAQ) complies with a 2017 European Union order to allow more competition on its search page. .
The European Commission fined Google 2.4 billion euros ($2.33 billion) five years ago, and told the company to stop favoring its shopping service.
The company later said it would treat its shopping service like competitors when they bid in an auction for ads in the shopping box that appears at the top of the search page.
But in a letter to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, 43 companies – including Britain’s Kelco, France’s Liquid Group, Sweden’s Price Runner and Germany’s Edudu – said the proposal was legally insufficient and did not lead to them benefiting from ad auctions.
โThe commission needs to reopen space on public search results pages for the most relevant providers, by removing from Google shopping units that do not allow competition but result in higher prices and fewer choices for consumers and unfair shifting of profit margins from merchants and competitors,โ the companies said in the letter seen. It has Reuters.
CSSs refer to shopping services by comparison.
They said Google’s mechanism violates the Digital Markets Act (DMA), new Vestager rules aimed at curbing the power of the tech giants, which will take effect in May next year.
“Google’s notable inclusion of shopping units is an apparent violation of the DMA ban on self-preference,” they said.
Companies from 20 European countries said: “Given the new, unmistakable legal framework, it is time to move on with the conversation. The most critical case at the heart of calls for DMA must be effectively terminated,” said companies from 20 European countries.
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