Since November 2010 the European Commission has been investigating whether Google’s business practices comply with European competition law. The Commission has identified four conducts that may violate Article 102 TFEU. To bring the investigation to an end, Google has offered several...

Google has argued that, in its comparison shopping decision, the European Commission created a novel rule that a dominant company may not favour its own services. Such a rule, it is claimed, would only be justified where the company provided an ‘indispensable service' as defined in the narrow...

Despite the rise of two- or multi-sided platforms in the digital sector, there is not yet an established antitrust policy for defining relevant markets that involve such platforms. Difficulties arise in particular where services are granted for free to some users. This article explains which...

On February 10th, 2021 the antitrust chamber of the German Regional Court of Munich granted two summary judgments in favor of the health portal NetDoktor, banning the preferential display within Google search results pages of boxes with information exclusively drawn from a state-run health...

A recently published study by the author addressed the remedies imposed in the European Commission’s (the “Commission”) Google Search (Shopping) antitrust decision of 2017. The study ‘Google’s (Non-) Compliance with the EU Shopping Decision,’ considered the measures that Google...

In 2017, the European Commission prohibited Google from favouring its comparison shopping service within general search results pages. It imposed a fine of US $ 2.73 billion for the committed abuse and a periodic payment penalty for any future non-compliance with the decision. On 10 November...

On 27 July 2017, the European Commission adopted a decision finding that, between January 2008 and 27 July 2017, Google infringed Article 102 TFEU by positioning and displaying more favorably, its own comparison shopping service (compared to competing comparison shopping services) in the general...

With its judgment of 10th November 2021, Europe’s General Court did not just dismiss Google’s appeal against the European Commission’s Google Search (Shopping) decision, uphold the fine, tell gatekeepers “don’t be evil,” and remind everyone that Europe ensures equal opportunities....