network operators to ensure that traffic from Android devices is directed to Google’s search engine. Google (i) required manufacturers to pre-install “Google Search” and ‘Chrome’ on their Android devices as a condition for accessing the “Play Store”; (ii) implemented a financial incentive scheme for manufacturers and network operators subject to the pre-installation of “Google Search” on their Android devices on an exclusive basis; and (iii) prevented manufacturers who wanted to pre-install Google’s exclusive applications on their devices from developing or selling smartphones that ran on versions of Android not approved by Google. In June 2017, the EC imposed a fine of €2.424 million on Google for abuse of its dominant position in general search services by favoring, since 2008, the positioning and display of its price comparison service in its general search results pages, to the detriment of competing price comparison services. The EC concluded that this behavior had the potential to exclude competing price comparison services, increasing costs for merchants and prices for consumers, reducing innovation, and harming consumers’ ability to access the most relevant price comparison services. In these three situations, the issue is precisely the direct or indirect manipulation of access to information made available to consumers, in violation of fair competition practices, and in ways that the European Commission has deemed to constitute behavior that undermines fair competition21. It is no coincidence that the three examples concern the same company22, owner of the “dominant” search engine in the information society. It is precisely this position that enables it to engage in unfair practices and exacerbates the harmful effects of competition from them. III. THE CLASSIFICATION OF COMMERCIAL ESTABLISHMENTS 21 I have dealt with this issue of the risks of intelligent search engines for fair competition in greater depth in: VENÂNCIO, Pedro Dias, Pesquisas inteligentes, Lealdade da concorrência & Liberdade de informação, in: RIBEIRO, João Sérgio; ABREU, Joana Covelo de; AMORIM, Carlos Abreu (Orgs.), Democracia e Comunicação Social – um debate introdutório para a era digital, Braga: UMinho Editora, 2022, p. 73–82. 22 Regarding the various antitrust lawsuits that Google has faced, read LEURQUIN, Pablo; ANJOS, Lucas, Condenações da Google pela aplicação do Direito da Concorrência da União Europeia, Revista de Defesa da Concorrência, v. 9, n. 1, p. 104–124, 2021. 575 FAIR COMPETITION IN THE RANKING OF COMMERCIAL ESTABLISHMENTS
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