Study: Google's online shopping search still disadvantages EU rivals despite an EU crackdown three years ago, sending <1% of traffic to rival services
Javier Espinoza / Financial Times : Tweets: @javierespft Tweets: Javier Espinoza / @javierespft : FT: Google rivals say tech giant is failing to tackle competition issues in google shopping case three years after US company made changes to let third parties bid for slots https://www.ft.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This study lands at the end of a five-year arc. Google denied Europe's accusations in 2015, rejected the case's framing again in 2016, and in 2017 the EU competition chief put approval of the remedy in competitors' hands. The fix adopted was auction-based: rivals could bid for top slots rather than receive free equal treatment.
Rivals have contested that structure from the start — their open letter in late 2018 claimed non-compliance, and by 2019 even the commissioner acknowledged the bidding scheme had not lifted rival traffic. The new under-1% figure converts those complaints into measurement.
First-order effects
- EU price comparison sites remain effectively invisible in shopping results despite paying for auction slots, sharpening their case that Google's remedy is failing on its own terms.
Second-order effects
- The finding hands the EU competition authority evidence that a market-designed remedy underperformed a mandated one, raising pressure to revisit the settlement-style approach it defended back when it left remedy approval to competitors.
Third-order effects
- If auction-based remedies keep producing these outcomes, antitrust enforcement against dominant search platforms shifts toward structural or design-level mandates rather than self-serving bid mechanisms — a template question for every future platform conduct case.
The trend: Platform antitrust remedies built on auctions and self-regulation are being tested by outcome data, pushing regulators toward stricter structural fixes.