The ax of layoffs also falls on Google, after the announcement made last night by Amazon. The Montain View giant is cutting hundreds of jobs in the digital assistance and hardware sectors as well as in the engineering team. The decision to reduce costs in these sectors – writes Ansa – is linked to the competition from artificial intelligence from Microsoft and OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, which are putting Google’s core search business in crisis.
According to Reuters, Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman are leaving. The group said it will cut hundreds of positions in its Voice Assistant subsidiary, while a few hundred roles will be eliminated in the hardware team responsible for Pixel, Nest and Fitbit, and most people in the augmented reality (AR) team will leave the company. The staff reductions will also affect hundreds of roles in the central engineering team.
Attorney General Juliane Kokott proposes to the EU Court of Justice to confirm the €2.4 billion fine imposed on Google for favoring its own product comparison service. As established by the European Commission and confirmed by the Court, Google has in fact used “its dominant position in the general search services market as a lever to favor its product comparator by preferentially displaying its results”. We read it in a note from the Court. The conclusions of the Advocate General are not binding on the Court.
«By decision of 27 June 2017, the Commission found that Google favored, on its general search results page, the results of its own product comparator over those of its competitors. Google, in fact, presented the search results of its product comparator at the top of that page and prominently, with attractive graphic and textual information, in the so-called Shopping Units; on the other hand, the search results of the other product comparators, its competitors, only appeared in a less favorable position as blue links”, recalls the Court.
«This resulted in users clicking on the results of Google’s product comparator more frequently than those of its competitors. The resulting diversion of traffic from the Google general results page was not based on a better quality of the product comparison service but instead resulted from self-favoritism and leverage on the Google general results page, i.e. exploitation of Google’s dominant position in the market for general Internet search services.” Google and Alphabet then appealed the Commission’s decision to the General Court of the European Union. With the ruling of 10 November 2021, the Court substantially rejected the appeal and, in particular, confirmed the fine.
On the other hand, the Court held that the even potential anti-competitive effects of Google’s behavior in the general search services market had not been demonstrated. Consequently, it annulled the decision in so far as the Commission had found a violation of the prohibition on abuse of a dominant position also in relation to that market. Google and Alphabet then appealed to the Court, requesting the annulment of the General Court’s ruling in so far as it had rejected their appeal and the annulment of the Commission’s decision. “The task of the Advocate General is to propose to the Court, in full independence, a legal solution in the case for which he has been appointed,” notes the Court. «The judges of the Court now begin to deliberate in this case. The sentence will be pronounced at a later date.”