Google has been formally accused by the European Commission of unlawful, monopolistic practices, and the American company could be hit with a record fine.
Google is said to have abused its search monopoly by prioritizing its services illegally, promoting its shopping results and diverting traffic away from its competitors, the European Union (EU) competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said.
"In the case of Google I am concerned that the company has given an unfair advantage to its own comparison shopping service, in breach of EU antitrust rules," said Vestager. "Google now has the opportunity to convince the Commission to the contrary. However, if the investigation confirmed our concerns, Google would have to face the legal consequences and change the way it does business in Europe."
The Telegraph reported that the total might change, but the commission has been allowed to fine Google a maximum of up to 3.3 billion Euros (About $3.39 billion USD) or 10 percent of its yearly earnings. The penalty could be announced within weeks. The highest fine to date is 1.1 billion Euros which Google had to pay in 2009
Google has denied wrongdoing and could be taking the route of Intel by choosing to fight the fine. In 2014, Intel had delayed the payment of a fine until a final decision was made.
The EU has issued a statement of objections accusing Google of many illegal practices including prominently promoting its shopping service in search results "irrespective of its merits," and reducing the search rank of competing services. The EU claims that this policy has been in place since 2008, because before Google starting providing this favorable treatment, Google's first comparison shopping service, Froogle, performed poorly and consequently failed.
The EU also declared that it would start an additional inquiry into the Android operating system, which could end up further increasing the fine.