Google has offered to include competitors in its shopping section in an attempt to appease the EU and avoid further antitrust fines. In June of this year, the EU found Google guilty of abusing its dominance in the search engine market by giving higher rankings to its own shopping results and demoting the rankings of competitors. According to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation, Google has now offered to give other comparison shopping companies the opportunity to bid to appear in its shopping section via Product Listing Ads. The European Commissioner for Competition has offered no comment on whether it will accept Google's offer, but multiple anonymous sources have said that the offer has been overwhelmingly rejected by Google's competitors for not going far enough. If Google's offer is rejected and it makes no other offers, then from the 28th of September it could be fined 5% of its average daily global turnover for every day that it does not comply with the EU's antitrust cease and desist order.Â
