Antitrust, privacy, and other litigation
Fines and lawsuits
European Union
On June 27, 2017, the company received a record fine of €2.42 billion from the European Union for "promoting its own shopping comparison service at the top of search results."[386]
On July 18, 2018,[387] the European Commission fined Google €4.34 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules. The abuse of dominants position has been referred to as Google's constraint applied to Android device manufacturers and network operators to ensure that traffic on Android devices goes to the Google search engine. On October 9, 2018, Google confirmed[388] that it had appealed the fine to the General Court of the European Union.[389]
On October 8, 2018, a class action lawsuit was filed against Google and Alphabet due to "non-public" Google+ account data being exposed as a result of a bug that allowed app developers to gain access to the private information of users. The litigation was settled in July 2020 for $7.5 million with a payout to claimants of at least $5 each, with a maximum of $12 each.[390][391][392]
On March 20, 2019, the European Commission imposed a €1.49 billion ($1.69 billion) fine on Google for preventing rivals from being able to "compete and innovate fairly" in the online advertising market. European Union competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Google had violated EU antitrust rules by "imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites" that required them to exclude search results from Google's rivals.[393][394]