I'm wondering how such a fine actually comes into existence. How does some EU committee get the idea that Google is anti-competitive here? Is this the result of lobbying by competitors? Can we somehow post the EU about instances where companies are being anti-competitive, and get them to take action somehow?
Given the enormous amount of anti-competitive behavior we see every day in the news, I can't help but feel this fine seems a bit arbitrary.
You can see the original fact sheet of the investigation here (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-4782_en.htm). The reasoning for the investigation is at the bottom. There were two complaints and an independent investigation by the committee.
The fines "reflect the gravity and duration of the infringement. They are calculated under the framework of a set of Guidelines last revised in 2006." (http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/procedures_101_en....). There's a link to the guidelines on the page.
Probably in part yes, but the European Commission is also pretty proactive. E.g. if I remember correctly, they reached out to Mozilla to get their take on how MS was bundling IE with Windows, after Opera originally complained about it. This came out of it: https://www.google.com/search?q=browser+choice+screen&tbm=is...
You don't really need lobbying in order to make Google conspicuous. In particular with their creative approaches to accounting.
> Is this the result of lobbying?
In all likelihood there was almost certainly an element of lobbying, in particular complaints about these business practices which eventually coalesced into some kind of more focused activities.
It seems a bit quixotic to blame "competitors". Which competitors exactly? That's the whole premise of abuse of dominant market position.
Google is debatably the leader of the tech market and mobile is the fastest growing segment, so the term "arbitrary" is not warranted - as in, picking market losers and winners by selective enforcement of the law.
Whenever allocating limited enforcement resources, you would expect the most egregious violators to be targeted first, with immediate social benefits and prompting self-compliance for smaller actors.
Given the enormous amount of anti-competitive behavior we see every day in the news, I can't help but feel this fine seems a bit arbitrary.