Google has been hit with a massive $2.7 billion fine by the European Union.
It's the biggest anti trust penalty the EU has ever given to a single company and totally eclipses the one $1 billion slap on On the wrist for Intel in 2009.
Google breached anti trust rules by favoring its own comparison shopping service.
If you ever wondered why Google Shopping links would appear at the top of search results, and rivals much lower down the page, you saw this practice first hand.
Now under the EU rules it's not illegal to have market dominance.
But if you are a big company you're not supposed to restrict competition.
This ruling came after a seven-year investigation.
And the commissioner said, quote, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors.
End quote.
Google now has to stop the practice within 90 days.
Otherwise, it faces penalty payments of up to five percent of the worldwide daily turnover of it's parent company, Alphabet.
And this could just lead the start of the search giant's troubles because the [UNKNOWN] is also investigating Android.
If Google is found to be crushing competition by forcing Google services to be pre-installed on Android phones It could mean even more fines.
I'm Lexy Savvides, and you can search out more tech news at CNET.com.
