The impact of digital platforms on the fairness of competition has been mentioned in several recent international studies, highlighting that “Switching from one platform to another for the user is costly and time consuming, so some platforms are gradually becoming dominant, which is a matter of fairness and competition”17. This same risk is highlighted in recital (2) of Regulation (EU) 2019/115018, which states that “the growing intermediation of transactions through online intermediation services, driven by significant indirect network effects based on data, leads to an increase in the dependence of this type of professional user, in particular micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), on such services in order to reach consumers”. Some of these problems have already been identified and addressed by the European Union. Below are three examples cited in the Portuguese Competition Authority’s report19, based on information available on the official website of the European Commission20: In March 2019, the EC imposed a fine of €1.49 million on Google for abuse of its dominant position in online search advertising intermediation by imposing contractual restrictions on website owners between 2006 and 2016 to limit the ability of competitors such as Microsoft and Yahoo to place their search ads on those websites. The clauses prohibited counterparties from placing search ads from Google’s competitors on their search results pages. Google then reserved the most visible and clicked space on those pages for Google ads and subjected changes to the way counterparties displayed advertising from its competitors to its control. In July 2018, the EC fined Google €4.3 million for abuse of its dominant position in generic Internet search services, smartphone operating systems, and app stores for the Android mobile operating system by imposing restrictions since 2011 on manufacturers of mobile devices using the Android mobile operating system and on mobile 17 Mishustina, T., Kravchenko, A., Poprotskyy, O., Myhovych, T., Artemchuk, L., & Vasylenko, O. Fair Competition for Business in the Field of Information and Communication Technologies in the Era of “Postcontemporary Society” Economy. Postmodern Openings, 13(2), 2022, p. 328. 18 Regulation (EU) 2019/1150 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on promoting fairness and transparency for business users of online intermediation services. 19 In AUTORIDADE DA CONCORRÊNCIA, Ecossistemas digitais, Big Data e Algoritmos, p. 26. 20 https://ec.europa.eu/competition/. 574 PEDRO DIAS VENÂNCIO
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