Türkiye slaps Google with nearly $15M fine over hotel searches

ISTANBUL : Türkiye’s competition watchdog on Monday announced it had imposed a fine of around TL 482 million ($14.85 million) on Google over its failure to comply with the precautionary measures related to hotel searches.

The Competition Board (RK) last month announced that the tech giant would be fined 0.0005% of its daily revenue until it fulfilled some of its unfulfilled obligations.

On Monday, it said the fine was imposed over Google’s failure to address the competition board’s concerns over fair competition with other local search engines.

“It has been determined that Google has implemented the designs that were found not to be implemented in the local search service regarding hotel queries to the local search service regarding hotel queries and has completed the process on 21.05.2024,” a statement by the RK said.

“In this context, the board has decided to terminate the daily administrative fine as of 21.05.2024 and to impose a total fine of approximately TL 482 million on Google as a sanction for not implementing the new designs for local search services in terms of hotel queries.”

Courtesy: Dailysabah