The hypothesis under consideration is abuse of a dominant position. According to the Competition Authority, the company would have hindered interoperability in the sharing of personal information with other platforms 14 Jul 2022 Domenico Aliperto
The Italian Competition Authority has launched an investigation against Google. The hypothesis under consideration by the Antitrust Authority is a possible abuse of a dominant position in violation of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It is the same Authority to communicate it with a note, where it is specified that yesterday inspections were conducted in the company's offices, making use of the collaboration of the military of the Guardia di Finanza. Index of topics • Possible unlawful behavior • Antitrust assessments • Google's thesis Possible unlawful conduct "The Alphabet/Google group holds a dominant position in several markets that allow large amounts of data to be acquired through the services provided (Gmail, Google Maps, Android) and in 2021 achieved a turnover of 257.6 billion dollars," the document reads. Specifically, Google would have hindered interoperability in the sharing of data on its platform with other platforms, in particular with the Weople app, managed by Hoda, an operator active in Italy that has developed a data investment bank.
According to the Authority, Google's behavior is able to compress the right to the portability of personal data, governed by Article 20 of the Gdpr, and to limit the benefits that consumers could derive from the exploitation of their data. The contested conduct results in a restriction of competition because it limits the ability of alternative operators to Google to develop innovative forms of use of personal data. Antitrust assessments In particular, Hoda represented to the Authority the negative effects of Google's conduct on its initiative aimed at enhancing personal data with the consent of the owner of the same and which offers innovative opportunities for use and still unexplored product perspectives. The Antistrust Authority points out that the institution of data portability, insofar as it makes it possible to facilitate the circulation of data and the mobility of users, offers alternative operators the possibility of exerting competitive pressure on operators such as Google, which base their dominance on the creation of ecosystems based on the management of tendentially unlimited amounts of data, functional only to its business model. Furthermore, the right to portability, if accompanied by effective interoperability mechanisms, can offer users the possibility of achieving the maximum economic potential from the use of personal data, including through alternative exploitation methods to those currently practised by the dominant operator. Google's thesis Google's response was not long in coming. "For almost ten years, Google has been offering people the ability to extract and transfer their data. They are tools designed to help people manage their personal information and not to allow other companies or intermediaries to access more data to sell. This would mean putting people's privacy at risk, as well as encouraging fraudulent activity," a spokesperson for the group said, commenting on the investigation launched by the Antitrust. "For companies, there are already ways to increase the direct portability of data in their services, for example through the open source Data Transfer Project, in which any organization is invited to participate."