The European Court of Justice has upheld a verdict that found Google guilty of search manipulation and abusing its market dominance in a case brought by a British couple who accused Google of destroying their price comparison website.
Shivaun and Adam Raff’s case began in 2009; the CJEU (European Court of Justice) found Google guilty in 2017. Google’s appeal was thrown out of court seven years later, ending the couple`s 15-year legal battle.
The story
British couple Shivaun and Adam Raff launched their price comparison start-up (Foundem) in June 2006.
Immediately, Google’s automated spam filters penalized the site and stopped ranking it for crucial search terms, like “price comparison” and “comparison shopping.”
The site plummeted in the search rankings and never recovered.
Adam Raff told BBC reporter Simon Tulett on Radio 4’s The Bottom Line:
- “Google essentially disappeared us from the internet.”
- “If you’re denied traffic, then you have no business.”
Google ignores complaints
The couple said they thought Google had mistakenly detected their site as spam and it would remove the penalty, and had no reason to assume Google was acting illegally.
For two years, the couple sent numerous requests to Google to remove the restrictions.
During that time, Adam and Shivaun`s site won the best UK comparison website, but it made little difference.
Google never responded, and the penalty remained.
The case goes to court
The couple who now sensed foul play took their case to Brussels. Shivaun told Adam Raff from the BBC that upon meeting regulators, they asked:
- “If this is a systemic issue, why are you the first people we’re seeing?”
Shivaun replied:
- We’re not 100% sure, but we suspect people are afraid because all businesses on the internet essentially rely on Google for the lifeblood that is their traffic.”
The European Commission launched an antitrust investigation into Google’s actions in November 2010.
Google found guilty
Seven years later, in 2017, the European Commission found Google guilty of illegally demoting its competitor’s rankings while promoting its own comparison shopping service and imposed a €2.4 billion fine.
During the investigation, the European Commission also found that Google had purposely demoted 20 other websites, including Yelp and Trivago.
Google appealed the 2017 ruling, and the European Court of Justice rejected it in September this year.
In another twist, based on Shivaun and Adam’s accusations, the European Commission has opened an investigation into whether Google continues to favor its own services in its search results.
Google’s Response
In reply to the European Commission’s decision to open another investigation into its actions, the tech giant said that since the 2017 ruling, it made the necessary changes.
Here`s Google`s response:
- “The CJEU [European Court of Justice] judgment [in 2024] only relates to how we showed product results from 2008-2017.”
- “The changes we made in 2017 to comply with the European Commission’s Shopping decision have worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services.”
- “For this reason, we continue to strongly contest the claims made by Foundem and will do so when the case is considered by the courts.”
The case continues
Adam and Shivaun are now pursuing civil damages against Google; the case will begin in 2026.
If they win, the odds are that Google will appeal, and a grueling fight that has already dragged on for 15 years will continue.
