The European Union is reported to be on the process of placing an end to Google's dominance in Europe by imposing a heavy fine believed to be around 10 percent of the company's annual revenue worldwide, an amount that they consider sufficient to establish deterrence.
It can be remembered that the European Union antitrust regulators accused Google for violating the antitrust regulations by providing payments for smartphone makers in exchange for preinstalling Google Play Store with Google Search on their devices.
The European Union hinted that this move can be considered appropriate since doing such simply suggests that Google is taking advantage of the dominant position it currently holds in the mobile market.
Although the European Union didn't mention the amount of fine that it plans to slap Google with, a series of leaked documents revealed that the figure can possibly go as much as $7.5 billion, which is roughly about 10 percent of the company's 2015 annual revenue.
According to tech experts, the fine that Google might be facing will most likely cover some of the cases that the European Union has filed against the company. First, in April 2015, Google was accused of favoring the comparison-shopping service it owns.
Second is the case in April 2016, when EU accused Google of influencing or pressuring telcos and handset makers to preinstall Google Apps, particularly the Google Search, and at the same time preventing such entities to sell handsets that are using Android's non-Google flavors.
Finally, an accusation claiming that Google has prevented AdSense users from displaying advertisements that are derived from different advertising platforms has surfaced in July 2016.
In the event that the European Union will require Google to pay such amount as a way of ending the company's dominance in Europe, it will probably be considered as the highest fine that the union has imposed, beating the $1.44 billion fine that it required Intel to pay in 2009, as well as the $3.23 billion fine it slapped on Daimler, Volvo and MAN.
Currently, Google has obtained a new extension that will allow the company to file its rebuttal against the charges thrown against it. Thus, the company now has up to Oct. 13 to furnish EU with its response regarding the Google Shopping charges and up to Oct. 26 to file their response to the AdSense issue.
By just looking at the dates mentioned earlier, it is quite safe to conclude that EU's plans of putting an end to Google dominance in Europe will still have to undergo a long process before it can require the tech company to pay the imposed fine.
Photo: Carlos Luna | Flickr
