The Competition Board concluded the investigation launched on 12.01.2023 concerning the allegation that the economic entity comprised of Alphabet Inc., Google LLC, Google International LLC, Google Ireland Limited and Google Reklamcılık ve Pazarlama Ltd. Şti. (Google) violated Article 6 of the Act no 4054 on the Protection of Competition by using its dominant position in the general search services market to obstruct the operations of other websites through some of the features it offered, and thereby abused its dominant position in the general search services market. On 25.06.2024, following the hearing held at the Competition Authority Headquarters, the Competition Board took its final decision on Google’s practices.

The investigation examined the allegations that various search features offered on Google’s desktop and mobile search results page, including “videos,” “people also ask,” “translation box,” “sports box” and “weather box,” pushed websites further down on the search results page and caused them to lose traffic.

As a result of the examination, the Board took the decision dated 04.07.2024 and numbered 24-28/682-283, ruling that while Google held dominant position in the general search services market, it did not abuse its dominant position in the general search services market through the search features it offered on the general search engine results page and therefore it was not necessary to impose administrative fines on Google.

To date, Google was imposed a total of 1.25 billion TL in fines within the framework of 4 investigations conducted by the Authority. In addition to the current investigation that was concluded without any fines, Google is currently under another investigation concerning allegations that Google, through various practices, favored its own products/services in the advertisement technology supply chain, where it operates in a vertically integrated structure, and that these practices involved

• GOOGLE directing the demand coming from demand-side platforms (DSPs) to its own supply-side platform (SSP) services, and
• GOOGLE favored its own SSP (AdX) through its publisher ad server.