The battle of the tech titans continues as Google launches a new shopping service in the US which provides users with product suggestions based on their internet search history.
Reported to be a move to tackle the rise of Amazon in product search and associated advertising revenues, it will be interesting to see whether the new shopping service succeeds. Google has long argued that it competes with the Amazon platform; perhaps this new product launch will be the ultimate test of this theory.
The move comes in the wake of a series of record fines against Google issued by the European Commission for breach of EU competition law. In these investigations, it was not accepted by the European Commission that Google’s comparison shopping service and Amazon’s services were in the same product market.
Please contact Tim Cowen if you have any questions regarding the above.