EU: Clifford Chance and Cleary lead as Google faces large fine

Clifford Chance (CC), Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and Covington & Burling are advising as the European Union prepares to come to a decision on the first stage of a three-pronged probe into the search group’s practices.

EU officials are reportedly poised to fine the search engine more than $ 900million for abusing its search market dominance by steering European consumers to its Google Shopping service.

The three law firms were first called up in 2015, when Google was accused of anti-competitive behaviour by the European Commission.

Cleary is representing Google with a team led by London-based competition partner Maurits Dolmans and Brussels-based counterparts Thomas Graf and Robbert Snelders.

Meanwhile, CC is advising the complainants on the case with a team led by partner Thomas Vinje, who is legal counsel and spokesman for lobby group FairSearch Europe, alongside antitrust partner Dieter Paemen.

The regulator has not formally disclosed the names of complainants, although a number of companies have gone public with their complaints. These include French legal search engine eJustice and British price comparison site Foundem.

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