Moreover, they have urged EU antitrust regulators to enforce a ruling against the company. The joint call by the group ratchets up pressure on European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager to take further action against Google, two years after she ordered it to stop favouring its own price comparison shopping service.
The companies said in a joint letter to Vestager seen by Reuters that the US web giant had yet to comply with the 2017 order. At the time, Google was also fined EUR 2.4 billion. The signatories to the letter are from 21 EU countries and include Idealo, Europe’s second largest price comparison shopping service, Polish No. 1 Ceneo, Britain’s Kelkoo, and Foundem and Heureka in the Czech Republic, according to Reuters.
They said Google’s proposal to allow competitors to bid for advertising space at the top of a search page had not boosted traffic to their sites. In response, Google said it was seeing positive results from its shopping remedies and more merchants were gaining traffic.
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