Being successful is a risky business, and nobody knows that better that search engine Google. Around the world, 9 out of every 10 searches run on Google, but that kind of dominance also invites scrutiny and suspicion. Governments on every continent are now setting up hurdles in the path of the search giant, charging the company with antitrust and/or privacy law violations. Most recently, India’s antitrust agency, the Competition Commission of India, slapped Google with penalties totaling $275 million for abusing its dominance in the Indian mobile developer market. Officials of the European Union are looking into whether Google’s anti-competitive practices have harmed app developers, and the company has already been fined for stifling competition through the dominance of Android. The EU fined Google more than $8.2 billion in recent years over antitrust practices. The United States also has an ongoing lawsuit against Google, alleging that the company has monopolized the ad-tech market and beat down competition by abusing its access to data. South Korea fined Google $50 million for violating their privacy laws, and the company also faces anti-competition lawsuits in the UK because of their digital advertising practices and over-pricing app store purchases. Google paid France $528 million in fines to resolve a dispute related to news publishers displaying copyrighted content, and an Australian court ordered Google to pay $43 million in penalties for misleading users on collection of their personal location data. Google and its parent company Alphabet have been put on notice that all countries are now stepping up their scrutiny of how it conducts business.
