MOSCOW, June 10 — The Turkish Competition Authority said today that it had fined US tech giant Google almost US$15 million (RM70 million) for failure to comply with hotel search requirements on the company’s web resources, reported Sputnik.
The regulator started paying attention to the company back in the fall of 2021. Then, it deemed that Google was abusing its dominant position in the hotel search engine market by not allowing local search platforms to use its web resources. Consequently, the company was fined over 296 million liras (RM42 million).
In March, the regulator imposed a daily penalty of 0.0005 per cent of the company’s daily revenue until the violations were resolved. The regulator gave the company three months to comply, and in mid-April, Google reported on its application, but the watchdog said the requirements had not been met.
“Google has been imposed a total of 482 million TL (US$14.8 million) in fines for the period in which it failed to implement the proposed measures with respect to hotel inquiries,” the regulator said in a statement.
It added that temporary fines imposed on Google in the related investigation were suspended on May 21. — Bernama-Sputnik
