Google: Tech giant loses 15-year lawsuit and pays $2.6 billion fine

Foundem they were hit by a Google search error, which activates one of the search engines’ automatic spam filters. Scroll down the website for lists of search results for relevant searches such as “price comparison” and “comparison shopping”.

Seeing a couple’s website, we charge fees when customers click product listings to other websites and struggle to make money.

“We keep an eye on our pages and see how they rank, and we see them drop almost immediately,” Adam said.

Although Foundem’s launch day didn’t go to plan, it led them to do something else: a fifteen-year legal battle ended with a record €2.4 billion fine for Google for abusing its dominant market position.

Many people are celebrating this case as a new moment for the global regulation of Big Tech.

Google spent seven years challenging that judgment, the June 2017 ruling, but before September this year the European Supreme Court – the European Court of Justice – dismissed the appeals.

Speaking to Radio 4 The Bottom Line for the first interview since that final judgement, Shivaun and Adam first explain: They think the website is starting, which is a mistake.

“At first we thought it would be collateral damage, but we wouldn’t be detected as spam by a false positive message,” Shivaun, 55 years old. “We just assume that we just have to put the am in the right place and they have to knock the am over.”

“If they deny you traffic, you don’t get any business,” Adam, 58.

The couple sent many requests to Google to remove the restriction, but more than two years later nothing changes and they say they get no response.

Meanwhile, the website is “completely normal” for other search engines, but that doesn’t matter much, according to Shivaun, since “everyone uses Google.”

The couple later discovers that the site isn’t just one person not giving Google a K-leg – by the time they find this tech giant guilty and impose a fine for 2017 after about 20 plaintiffs, including Kelkoo, Trivago and Yelp.

Adam, we built my career in supercomputing, say I “opened my eyes” to Foundem when I smoked cigarettes outside my previous employer’s office.

That time, price comparison websites never grow like that, and each company specializes in a certain product. But Foundem is different because customers can compare a wide range of products – from clothing to flights.

“No one else is even around here,” smiles Shivaun, who himself works as a software consultant for several major global brands.

For dia 2017 ruling, the european commission finds that google illegally promotes its own search results price comparison service while dem downgrades those of dia competitors.

Ten years later, though – after the launch of Foundem – Adam says I have no reason to believe Google is deliberately anti-competitive for online shopping. “They’re not really serious players,” he says.

But at the end of 2008, the couple began to suspect foul play.

After three weeks before Christmas and the couple we receive a message warning them that the website suddenly starts loading slowly. According to him, there is a cyber attack, “but in reality everyone just starts visiting our website,” Adam laughs.

Channel 5 The Gadget Show only names Foundem as the best price comparison website for Britain.

“And that’s really important,” Shivaun explains, “because you’re contacting Google and saying, ‘Look, that’s certainly not going to benefit your users, making it impossible for them to find us.

“And what we get from Google should not be completely ignored, but should actually ‘walk away’.”

“That’s when we know, OK, we have to fight,” Adam said.

The couple goes to meet Tori Pipo, with limited success, and they take the case to the regulators of the UK, US and Brussels.

With the latter – with the European Commission (EC) – the matter will eventually get off the ground, with the launch of the antitrust investigation in November 2010. The first meeting with the regulators will take place in front of a portable cabin for Brussels.

“One of the things they say if it’s a systemic problem, why would we say it’s the first time they’ve seen it?” Shivaun tock.

“We’re saying we’re not 100% sure, but we suspect people are scared because all internet businesses are essentially dependent on Google for their lifeline.”

When they had a hotel room for Brussels, just a few hundred meters from the commission building, when competition commissioner Margarethe Vestager finally announced the verdict, and on other shopping websites, what they are waiting for.

But no popping champagne corks. The emphasis is not on ensuring that the EC enforces the decision.

“I think it’s a shame that Google is saying they’re insulting us,” Shivaun said. “If maybe they train us to think we can make a difference, and we really don’t like bullies.”

Even Google’s latest defeat for this case last month didn’t put an end to the couple.

Dem believes that Google’s behavior is still anti-competitive and the EC has investigated this.

Before March this year, under the new Digital Markets Act, the commission opened an investigation into Google’s parent company, Alphabet, over whether it would favor its own goods and services for search results.

One tok-tok pesin for Google says: “The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (in 2024) only concerns the way we show product results from 2008-2017.

“The changes we are making for 2017 to comply with the European Commission’s Shopping Decision have been working successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks across more than 800 price comparison services.

“For this reason, we will vigorously contest Foundem’s claims, and we will do so as the matter is considered by the courts.”

Di Raffs has also filed a civil damages claim against Google, which will begin in the first half of 2026.

But if the couple gets an overall win, it will likely be a Pyrrhic one – they’ve been forced to close Foundem for 2016.

The long battle against Google is not small for them either.

“I guess I have to say it will take many years because we won’t make the same choice,” Adam said.