The Google Shopping Decision Workshop

Thursday, January 18, 2018
Brussels, Belgium

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Valérie Meunier, Vice President at Compass Lexecon in Paris, spoke at this law and economics workshop organised by Concurrences Review in partnership with Compass Lexecon and White & Case. Other speakers included Nicholas Banasevic (DG COMP, Brussels), Ioannis Lianos (University College London), Oliver Bethell (Google, London) and James Killick (White & Case, Brussels).

Valérie commented on the European Commission’s theory of harm in the Google Shopping decision, in which it concluded that Google had abused its market dominance as a search engine to promote its own comparison shopping service in search results, whilst demoting rivals. She suggested that a theory of harm based on (constructive) refusal to deal would have been more fitting. She reviewed the legal conditions, the case law and the ‘exceptional circumstances’ test. She then applied the test – a balancing of the pro-competitive and anti-competitive effects of intervention - to the Google case and concluded that intervention seemed justified.