Southeast Asia Information Port (www.dnyxxg.com) – The European Union announced on the 9th that it has launched an antitrust investigation into US internet giant Google, focusing on whether Google abused its dominant position to distort competition in the artificial intelligence (AI) services market.
According to a statement released by the European Commission that day, the EU suspects that Google either failed to provide reasonable compensation to publishers when using their content for AI services, or did not allow publishers to refuse, leaving many publishers with no choice but to continue using Google search due to traffic considerations.
Furthermore, the EU suspects that Google either failed to provide reasonable compensation to content creators when using content from its YouTube channel to train AI models, or did not allow content creators to refuse, and also prohibited other developers from using YouTube content to train AI models.
The statement said that the EU will investigate whether Google offered unfair contract terms or set unfair trading conditions to online publishers and content creators, and whether it enjoyed "privileges" in using YouTube content. If these allegations are true, Google is suspected of violating EU antitrust law and distorting competition in the AI services market.
This is the second time this year that the EU has launched an attack on Google. In September of this year, the EU determined that Google distorted competition in the online advertising market and fined it €2.95 billion. In November, the EU announced an investigation into Google to assess whether its search results were fair to the media industry.
The EU has previously invoked antitrust regulations to impose heavy fines on Google several times. In 2017, the EU determined that Google used its dominant search engine position to manipulate online shopping comparison search results, thereby directing internet users to its own shopping services, and fined Google €2.42 billion. In 2018, the EU determined that Google used its dominant position in the Android system in the EU market to "illegally restrict" mobile phone manufacturers and mobile network operators, and fined Google €4.34 billion. (End)
