Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, will meet with Europe’s antitrust chief on March 30 to discuss competition and digital challenges, according to a European Commission official.
The meeting was verified by Alphabet. In the last decade, Margrethe Vestager has fined the world’s most popular internet search engine more than 8 billion euros ($8.8 billion) for obstructing competitors in shopping comparison websites and online search advertising, as well as for its Android mobile operating system.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai to meet EU antitrust chief March 30 https://t.co/KBovKtZCTe pic.twitter.com/SA44betMll
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 24, 2022
In 2017, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager punished Google for using its own price comparison shopping tool to obtain an unfair competitive advantage over smaller European competitors. In the previous decade, Google has racked up 8.25 billion euros in EU antitrust fines as a result of three judgments.
The EU’s General Court dismissed Google’s challenge to the penalties in November, stating the European Commission had rightly determined that the company’s tactics hurt competition.
The company’s contention that the presence of merchant platforms demonstrated substantial competition was rejected by judges in Luxembourg.
