Turkey fines Google more than $36 million for breaching competition laws

Ankara’s competition watchdog has imposed a large fine on Google after it was found to be in violation of the country’s laws and suppressing local competitors through its dominant market position.

The decision was announced by Turkey’s Competition Authority on Wednesday. The fine follows the watchdog’s investigation into Google’s parent company, Alphabet, as well as a number of its subsidiaries.

Google was found to be in breach of local competition laws, the watchdog said. Namely, the tech giant was accused of meddling with search results in the content services market by placing prominent text ads at the top of the search results – while pushing competitors’ websites down the page. The company abused its dominant market position to suppress the competition, the watchdog concluded.

The tech giant was fined some 296 million Turkish liras ($36.6 million) for the violation, and given six months to fix the situation. After implementing the required changes, the company will have to report to the Competition Authority annually.

In recent months, Google and other US-based tech companies have faced growing pressure from authorities in multiple countries. The corporations have repeatedly run into trouble over violations of antitrust laws, opaque advertising policies as well as abuse of their dominating market position.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!