The Turkish Competition Authority has announced that it had fined tech giant, Google, around 482 million lira (US$14.85 million) for not meeting its hotel search-related requirements.
Google was penalised for not responding to the board’s concerns about fair competition with other local search engines, according to a written statement released by the Competition Authority on June 10.
The competition commission stated last month that, as of April 15, Google will be subject to an administrative fee equal to 0.05% of its 2023 revenues every day until it complies with the ruling on local search services and hotel requests.
The statement claimed that Google had an advantage over rival local search and lodging price comparison services.
“Despite Google’s dominant position in the general search services market, it makes it difficult for competitors to operate and distorts competition in the local search services and accommodation price comparison services markets by preventing rival local search sites from entering its service,” the Competition Board (RK) said.
“In this context, the board has decided to terminate the daily administrative fine as of 21.05.2024 and to impose a total fine of approximately TL 482 million on Google as a sanction for not implementing the new designs for local search services in terms of hotel queries.”
The action comes after the watchdog’s similar ruling, when it declared that social media giant Meta had abused its position on its platforms, Instagram and Threads, and granted an interim injunction against the company.
We earlier reported that the French competition authority announced that it has penalised Alphabet’s Google 250 million euros ($271.73 million) for violating EU intellectual property laws in its dealings with media publishers.