A French commercial court has ordered Google to pay €500,000 in damages and interest to the plaintiff and a €15,000 euro fine. The court has found Google guilty of abusing its dominant position with Google Maps to erase the competition. This ruling is the outcome of a two years battle launched by French online mapping solution provider Bottin Cartographes against Google France and Google Inc.
The court found Google’s guilty at two levels: the obvious one is that it provided its map service for free to business customers, while the service had an obvious cost, pushing the competition to bankruptcy. The second count, which is less talked about but more insidious, is that Google used its dominant position in search to force companies to use its map API. Because using Google maps API improves the natural ranking in Google search and that Google has around 90 percent market share in search in France, there was not much alternative for French companies.
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