Italian Competition Authority Closes Investigation into Google's Alleged Abuse of Dominance, Commits to Enhancing Data Portability

The Italian Competition Authority has ended its probe into the alleged abuse of its position by Alphabet Inc's GOOG GOOGL Google LLC, Google Ireland Limited, and Google Italy S.r.l (Google) by making the proposed commitments binding.

The Alphabet and Google group's dominant position in several markets enabled it to acquire large amounts of data through its services (Gmail, Google Maps, Android). In 2022, it achieved a turnover of $282.8 billion.

Also Read: Google Bows Down To EU Tech Rules, Cuts Commission In Google Play App Store

Google's allegedly abusive conduct consisted of obstacles to interoperability in data sharing with other platforms, particularly with the Weople APP, developed by Hoda.

Data portability under the GDPR allows alternative firms to exert competitive pressure on companies like Google. Moreover, the right to portability may enable users to obtain the maximum economic potential from using their data.

Overall, the Authority found the commitments proposed by Google to be adequate to address the competition concerns. The group presented a package of three commitments, two of which envisage supplementary solutions to Takeout - the service Google makes available to end users for backing up their data - to facilitate data export to third-party operators. The third commitment offers the possibility of testing a new solution allowing direct data portability from service to service for third-party operators.

In 2022 Google suffered its second setback in Europe in less than a year. The EU's top court agreed with the bloc's antitrust regulators against a landmark €4.3 billion euro ($4.3 billion) fine on the tech giant for abusing its influence.

The U.S. Big Tech companies remained embroiled in global regulatory probes for alleged abuse of their influence to thwart competition.

Price Action: GOOG shares traded lower by 0.23% at $132.71 in the premarket on the last check Monday.

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