European Union's fines against Google cross the line

Paris

THE European Union's regulatory bodies seem to be particularly hostile to Google. In June 2017, the European Commission fined the company 2.42 billion euros (S$3.8 billion) for breaching EU antitrust rules, after concluding that it had "abused its market dominance as a search engine by giving an illegal advantage to another Google product, its comparison shopping service".

Last month, the Commission went after Google again, fining it 4.34 billion euros for "illegal practices regarding Android mobile devices"; it said Google had agreements with mobile-device manufacturers and network operators to "to pre-install the Google Search app and browser app (Chrome)".

Moreover, it seems that the European Parliament and several EU member states would like to dismantle Google by separating its search engine from ot…