Turkey's Watchdog Slaps $36.65M Fine For Google's Anti-Competitive Practices: Report

Turkey’s Competition Board slapped a fine of over $36.65 million (TL 296 million) on Alphabet Inc’s GOOG GOOGL Google for abusing its monopoly position in the search engine arena, Reuters reports.
Turkey’s Competition Authority alleged Google of violation of its competition law by complicating organic search results in the content services market by conspicuously placing text ads at the top of its general search results, excluding its peers, AA reports.
Additionally, Google will have to ensure within six months that its peers were not deprived. The company will have to report to the board annually for five years regarding the issue.
The investigation involved Turkish Google Reklamcılık ve Pazarlama Ltd., Google International LLC, Google LLC, Google Ireland Ltd., and Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
Turkey’s Competition Authority had previously imposed a $25.6 million (TL 196.7 million) fine on Google last Nov, for the same reason, Daily Sabah reports. The authority had issued a penalty of TL 98 million on Google in Feb. 2020 for abusing its market influencing position.
The European Commission also imposed a $1.69 billion penalty on Google for breaking the anti-trust rules for online advertising.
Price action: GOOG shares traded lower by 0.07% at $2,265.69 on the last check Wednesday.