Earlier we heard that the European Commission has fined Google €2.42 billion for promoting their own shopping service in search results and now the search giant has released an official statement.
The company has said that it respectfully disagrees with the ruling and that they will review the decision in detail as they consider an appeal.
We believe the European Commission’s online shopping decision underestimates the value of those kinds of fast and easy connections. While some comparison shopping sites naturally want Google to show them more prominently, our data show that people usually prefer links that take them directly to the products they want, not to websites where they have to repeat their searches.
We think our current shopping results are useful and are a much-improved version of the text-only ads we showed a decade ago. Showing ads that include pictures, ratings, and prices benefits us, our advertisers, and most of all, our users. And we show them only when your feedback tells us they are relevant. Thousands of European merchants use these ads to compete with larger companies like Amazon and eBay.
You can see the full statement from Google over at their website at the link below, the company is likely to appeal the ruling by the European Commission.
Source Google
