Google had to pay a £2.4 billion fine (around Rs 26,172 crore) to a UK couple for abusing its market dominance in the shopping comparison sector. The tech giant had appealed the fine, initially imposed by the European Commission in 2017, but Europe’s highest court, the European Court of Justice, dismissed the appeal in September, according to the BBC.
The couple stated, “Google effectively erased us from the internet.” The couple who won the battle, Shivaun Raff and her husband Adam, recently shared how their pioneering price comparison site, Foundem, was impacted by a Google search penalty triggered by one of the search engine’s automated spam filters.
A UK couple won 15-year-long legal battle against #Google, with the tech giant ordered to pay a fine of 2.4 billion (Rs 26,171 crore).
Read the full report here.https://t.co/eJHUom9EYJ
— Ashok Malik (@ashokmalik) October 28, 2024
The matter came into light when they launched the website as they saw a sharp decline in their visibility on Google search results, especially for terms like “price comparison” and “comparison shopping.” This drop drastically reduced their audience reach and revenue potential.
Adam stated that they were monitoring their ur rankings and then saw them all plummet almost immediately. Initially, the couple thought their site’s poor performance was an unfortunate mistake, possibly a misidentification by Google’s spam filters. Shivaun expressed their belief that this was collateral damage, hoping that with sufficient communication, the issue could be resolved.
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Despite numerous attempts to engage with Google and improve their search ranking, the couple received no response for more than two years. By late 2008, they began to suspect that something more complex was at work when their site started experiencing unusually high traffic, prompting them to consider the possibility of a cyber attack. However, it turned out to be a surge in user interest.
A UK couple just took down Google in a 15-year battle over their site, Foundem, getting buried in search results. The court hit Google with a Rs 21,000 crore fine for unfair practices. Total David vs Goliath moment! 👀💥#google #uk #BigTechBattle #TechJustice#AntitrustWin #Power
— Inaiyam_Ko (@Inaiyam_ko) October 29, 2024
Eventually, Channel 5’s The Gadget Show recognized Foundem as the best price comparison website in the UK.
After not receiving a satisfactory response from Google about their site’s performance, Shivaun and Adam sought help from regulators in the UK, US, and Brussels. Despite ultimately closing Foundem in 2016, they are now pursuing a civil damages claim against Google, set to begin in the first half of 2026.
In 2017, the European Commission imposed its largest penalty to date on Google, although this has since been surpassed by a £4.3 billion fine against the company. Google stated that it made changes in 2017 to comply with the Commission’s decision, claiming that its approach has been successful for over seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services.
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